Winner: Ulrich Tallarek.

This year the Society has awarded the Silver Jubilee medal to Professor Ulrich Tallarek from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany for his significant contributions to the development and understanding of fluid flow and transportation phenomena in a chromatographic system.

Professor Tallarek began his academic career at the University of Tubingen where after being awarded his first degree, he later studied for a PhD under the joint supervision of Professors Ernst Bayer and George Guiochon. Ernst and Georges are both highly respected chromatographers in their own right and the Ulrich benefitted from their tuition in not only guiding his studies but also ensuring that he was connected appropriately.

After successfully completing his PhD studies on fluid dynamics in chromatography studied by nuclear magnetic resonance, Ulrich joined Professor Guiochon for 6 months as a visiting scientist in Tennessee. Professor Tallerek returned to Europe, in particular, to The Netherlands on an EU Marie Curie post-doc investigating the use of NMR of temporally and spatially resolved dynamics in porous media. In 2000 he returned to Germany to the University of Magdeburg where he remained until 2007 when he moved to his current place of employment in Marburg, where he is a director of the Materials Research Center.

His research is aimed at obtaining a basic understanding of functional materials and analytical methods, from the mechanisms of analyte-surface interactions (sorption, reaction) to macroscale transport behaviour. This approach relies on the discovery of the fundamental material morphology – surface functionality – mass/charge transport relationships.

Professor Tallarek has already had a significant in the field of chromatography and as a consequence has been awarded an array of awards including;

  • 2003: Desty Memorial Lecture
  • 2006: Young Scientist Award from DECHEMA e.V.
  • 2013: Finalist, World Technology Awards, for category “Environment”
  • 2013: The Analytical Scientist Power List, top 100 analytical scientists.

Ulrich has also been involved in supporting the separation science community through his editorial work for LCGC and Chromatography Online as well as being on the scientific committee for the twentieth DICP Symposium (XX), Microscale Bioseparation (2009) and HPLC 2014 International Scientific Committee (2014).

Professor Tallarek has published nearly 150 papers in referred journals, his work being characterised by mathematical and spectroscopic studies of chromatographic systems, ranging from his early NMR work with Albert, Professor Georges Guiochon and Professor Ernst Bayer – to his more recent studies on monoliths and the aqueous layer in HILIC. His publications are primarily in high impact journals, including Analytical Chemistry and the Journal of Chromatography A, including those focussing on physical chemistry, high performance computing and materials science. He has worked recently with Jorgenson and continued to collaborate with Guiochon up to George’s passing in 2014.

Professor Tallarek has demonstrated his exceptional abilities in the field of chromatography and as such the Chromatographic Society are delighted to honour him with the Silver Jubilee award for 2017.