The 58 th Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy had nearly 20,000 registered visitors and more than 150 editors and reporters from around the world.
The editors search the exhibition floor for the products that they believe should be brought to the attention of their readers.
This is like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack - the exhibition is enormous with more than a thousand exhibiting companies.
The judging involves a technical review of each nomination, followed by a voting session.
This year the editors nominated more than 30 products for consideration.
For a product or technology to be eligible for an award it must be on the exhibition floor and enjoying its first appearance at Pittcon.
Gold, Silver and Bronze plaques are awarded after votes are counted, with all other nominations getting an 'honorable mention'.
Gold: Waters Corporation, Synapt HD-MS A next generation mass spectrometer that differentiates sample ions by size, shape and charge as well as mass (more info) .
Silver (tie): Paraytec, Actipix The world's first miniature multiplexed capillary UV area detector that allows the simultaneous analysis of up to six channels (more info) .
ThermoFisher Scientific, LTQ XL ETD A linear ion trap MS equipped with an Electron Transfer Dissociation (ETD) source for protein and peptide analysis (more info) .
Bronze (tie): Bruker, Alpha FT-IR
The world's smallest FT-IR instrument, which is about the size as a piece of A4 paper and has a spectral range of 375-7500nm -1 .
Horiba Jobin Yvon, Activa M
An inductively-coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES) for multi-line analysis across the full 120-800nm spectrum.
Honorable mentions: Agilent, 7890GC ; Ametek, Apollo 40 SD ; Aspectrics, EP-NIR ; Axsun Technologies, Anavo ; Bio-Rad, KnowItAllAnywhere ; Bruker, RAID-AFM ; Bruker AXS, Ultra Bright X-Ray source ; CEM, Explorer Q ; Cerno, MassWorks CLIPS ; Dionex, RFIC ; Eksigent, Express RT ; Glass Expansion, IsoMist ; Hiperscan, SGS Scanning Grating NIR ; InnovX, Alpha Series XRF ; Labcyte, Portrait 630 ; Metrohm Peak, 850 IC ; MicroSpectral Sensors, I-Lab ; Nanoliter, Induction Based Fluidics ; Shimadzu, Formula Predictor Software ; Shimadzu, Axima TOF-TOF ; Shimadzu, Stablo Ex ; Spectro, ARCOS ICP-OES ; Tiger Optics, Halo-H2O ; Torion, Miniature GC-MS .