Best Poster Award @ MSB 2021

Almost a tradition but also in this issue of the MSB symposium series, I arranged the reviews and chaired the panel of reviewers to honor the best posters at the 37th International Symposium on Microscale Separations and Bioanalysis (eMSB2021) organized by Dr. Alexander Ivanov of Northeastern University together with associated co-chairs (see https://msb-conferences.org/). Registered participants can access all oral and poster presentations from this page.

The full set of slides that I prepared for the award ceremony, at last, is given below, and a list of the awardees.

About the BPA:
  • 57 participating poster contributions
  • 12 awards available
  • 3 Electrophoresis Poster Prizes, $100 gift card
  • 6 Royal Society of Chemistry Poster Prizes, £100 book vouchers
  • 3 MSB 2021 Poster Prizes, $100
  • A panel of 12 peers reviewed 4-5 posters each
  • Panel chair, Gerard Rozing
Review criteria:

The posters have been reviewed and ranked based on

  • novelty and originality of the work, creativity, and potential for innovation (impact)
  • scope of work, technical quality of experimental design, execution of experiments
  • quality of the presentation and presenters' explanation (video, chat at the poster)
BPA Reviewer Panel:
Tomasz Bączek
Fernando Benavente
Beatrix Ueberheide
Ryan T. Kelly
Yu Lu
Guinevere S.M. Lageveen-Kammeijer
Rob Haselberg
Andy High
Jan Preisler
Myriam Taverna
Rawi Ramautar
Peter Nemes
My Observations:
  • Too much text on the poster – A poster ≠ manuscript
  • Readability many times poor (size, resolution of the monitor)
  • Only some provided videos
  • Live chat did not work well; authors were not always available
Recommendations for future e-MSB:
  • Avoid poster presentation as PDF. It is inadequate @ an e-symposium
  • Have a mandatory poster layout with fixed sections => focus on essentials
  • Allow HTML to format the document and include audiovisual and live elements.
  • Make details and supporting information available per Q-code.
  • Smooth live discussions at session time
Awarded Posters:
All awardees have been informed by the organizers and have received an award certificate and instructions to claim their prize. Feel free to contact me for more information
Awardees