Winner: Dr Davy Guillarme

The Chromatographic Society is pleased to announce the award of the Jubilee Medal to Dr Davy Guillarme from the University of Geneva in recognition of his contributions to the development of chromatographic techniques (HPLC, UPLC and SFC) and their hyphenation to mass spectrometry.

Dr Davy Guillarme began his academic career at the University of Lyon in France, where he obtained his PhD on the possibilities and limitations of “high temperature” in liquid chromatography, under the supervision of Dr Sabine Heinisch in 2004. Then, he moved to the University of Geneva in Switzerland for a post-doc on the hyphenation of capillary electrophoresis and mass spectrometry in the group of Prof. Jean-Luc Veuthey. In parallel, he worked on the development of ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) for the analysis of drug substances in the same research group.

The objective was to show the benefits of this brand new technology, such as the ability to achieve high resolution or ultra-fast separations. He developed an excel spreadsheet for method transfer between regular HPLC and UHPLC systems. To date, this calculator has been downloaded more than 17,000 times. His work on UHPLC was recognized by the award for excellence in chemistry and analytical toxicology (CCCTA, Switzerland) in 2008.

Since 2010, he has held a permanent position of Senior Lecturer at the University of Geneva and has developed a strong research activity, initially working in the exploration of chromatographic approaches (in liquid and supercritical modes) for the determination of small molecules in pharmaceutical formulations and biological fluids, and exploring the fundamental aspects of these chromatographic techniques.

In 2012, he started a new project to evaluate the possibilities and limitations of chromatographic approaches for the determination of large biomolecules, such as therapeutic proteins, monoclonal antibodies (mAb) and antibody-drug conjugates (ADC). He initiated a successful partnership with Dr Alain Beck from the company Pierre Fabre Laboratoires, which specializes in monoclonal antibodies production and characterization. Dr Guillarme has developed an important knowledge of chromatographic approaches for the analysis of biopharmaceuticals. He received funding from the Swiss National Foundation (SNF) as a principal investigator, for a project entitled “Improving the analytical strategies for the characterization of monoclonal antibodies, biosimilars and antibody-drug conjugates”. Here he has developed numerous collaborations with the providers of scientific instrumentation and academic laboratories to enhance and develop the analytical characterization of biopharmaceuticals.

Since 2004, Dr Guillarme has published about 200 papers (h-index of 44 in Scopus, citation number > 5300) and the number of citations of his work is increasing rapidly each year, with over 800 citations in 2017. He has given more than 80 presentations in national and international conferences and received the LC-GC emerging leader award in chromatography in 2013 from LC-GC journal (USA). He has also been elected among the 100 most influential people worldwide in analytical sciences by the journal “The Analytical Scientist” in 2013 and 2015, among the “TOP 40 under 40” most influential people worldwide in analytical sciences in 2014 and among the 10 “pharma pioneers” worldwide in 2017.

Davy is also involved in the support of the separation science community, through his participation to the editorial board of several journals including Analytical Chemistry, Journal of Chromatography A, and Journal of Separation Science, LC-GC Europe, LC-GC North America, Chromatographia, American Pharmaceutical Review and others. He will also be an associate editor of Journal of Chromatography B from January 2018. Last but not least, he is Vice President of the Club Lyonnais de Chromatographie (France) and an active member of the board of the CCCTA (Switzerland), in charge of the training activities.
Dr Davy Guillarme has demonstrated his exceptional abilities, application and commitment to the field of separation science and as such the Chromatographic Society is delighted to honour him with the Jubilee Medal for 2018.Davy will receive his award in September at ISC 2018 in Cannes-Mandelieu.