The Subdivision on Chromatography and Separations Chemistry of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Analytical Chemistry is pleased to announce Professor Robbyn K. Anand as the recipient of the 2020 Satinder Ahuja Award for Young Investigators in Separation Science. This award recognizes and encourages outstanding contributions to the field of separation science by a young chemist or chemical engineer from academia, industry, or national laboratories. The award will be formally presented to Prof. Anand at Pittcon in March 2021.
Robbyn K. Anand earned her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin under the guidance of Prof. Richard M. Crooks, followed by a NIH Postdoctoral Fellow position at the University of Washington working with Prof. Daniel T. Chiu. She also served as the ACS Puget Sound Local Section Secretary during her time in Washington. Prof. Anand is currently the Suresh Faculty Fellow at Iowa State University, where she joined the Department of Chemistry as an Assistant Professor in 2015, with a research focus on bioanalytical chemistry and cancer diagnostics. She has been a pioneer in the application of non-linear electrokinetic methods to separate biomarkers from complex fluids and to analyze them in situ by integration with electrochemical sensors and biomolecular assays. These methods broaden access to diagnostic information and improve treatment outcomes by reducing the time, cost, and infrastructure required for clinical analysis. For example, her work addresses a need for rapid detection of tumor DNA at the point of care. Her group has implemented ion concentration polarization (ICP) in blood plasma to separate and enrich biomolecules and recently reported focusing of tumor DNA within a bed of bioconjugated beads followed by electrochemical detection.