Pittcon 2011 has reported that 17,098 attendees participated in the annual Conference and Exposition, which took place March 13-18 in Atlanta. Twenty-five percent of the conferees in attendance were from 87 countries outside the U.S.

“In a time when many other shows are experiencing a decline in attendance, Pittcon’s [attendance] is strong and steady, which tells us the economy is moving in the right direction,” said Penny Gardner, Pittcon 2011 president. “Many exhibitors commented to us that it was the best show they’ve had in years in terms of the number of generated leads for equipment purchases.”

The exposition included 979 exhibiting companies occupying 2,059 booths showcasing the latest laboratory instrumentation, equipment, and services across a range of applications and technologies, including separation sciences, mass spectrometry, spectroscopy, nanotechnology, laboratory automation, and informatics. There were 193 companies (19.7%) from 31 countries outside of the U.S. This year, Pittcon welcomed 115 (11.7%) first-time exhibitors.

The comprehensive Technical Program included more than 2,000 individual presentations distributed among Invited Symposia, Organized Contributed Sessions, Achievement Awards, Workshops, and Poster presentations. More than 100 invited speakers addressed topics of global interest, including alternative and sustainable energy, homeland security, food and drug safety, environmental issues, new materials development, and bioanalytical techniques.

Chad A. Mirkin delivered the plenary lecture, “Polyvalent DNA Architectures: New Modalities for Intracellular Gene Regulation and Detection,” to a capacity crowd of 1,200 attendees. His talk focused on the rules that govern the use of modifying nanoparticles with oligonucleotides in biodiagnostics and intracellular gene regulation and sequence specific crystallization, high selectivity and sensitivity nucleic acid and protein detection, and “antisense” therapy.

Pittcon 2012 takes place in Orlando, FL, on March 11-16. For more information, phone (800) 825-3221, ext. 203 or visitwww.pittcon.org.