Many of the KOL work closely with Shimadzu Innovation Centers and Application Development & Support Center located across the world including, China, Germany, Singapore and the United States. These institutes were founded in response to numerous collaborations and are staffed by Shimadzu scientists and equipped with Shimadzu instrumentations. This has enabled Shimadzu to stay in touch on a daily basis with its partner scientists to push projects forward faster.
Dr. Leitner explains that it is initiatives like these that make his relationship with Shimadzu unique.
“I have been in the business for over three decades and personal contacts are really important to me.
It makes a difference if you know the person. Shimadzu is starting to communicate much more. They try to speed up things in recent years.”
The KOL talks at the two-day summit focused on biomarkers for cancer and other diseases, imaging modalities for precision surgery, and advanced methods to evaluated food and water quality, among other important state-of-the-art innovations.
However, the summit’s aim was not only to solve scientific problems but was also to bring together Team Shimadzu executives and independent scientists from different research interests to encourage new approaches towards their respective scientific problems.
“Shimadzu should be commended for creating a forum to bring together experts in all different fields. I have benefitted tremendously. I know there are at least three KOL and a couple of authors that I will continue conversation with,” said Dr. Rai, who spoke about his research on the study of exosomes from the body to treat prostate cancer.
The influence of Shimadzu on the research was apparent by the different types of Shimadzu instruments used by the KOL including PESI-MS, MALDI-TOF MS, and GC-MS and also by the different Shimadzu initiatives such as lab4you (https://www.shimadzu.eu/lab4you) and the Shimadzu Institute for Research Technologies (http://www.uta.edu/sirt/), where Dr. Schug is a Shimadzu Distinguished Professor.
“We’ve been working with Shimadzu for a number of years in several areas. I had the opportunity to work with Shimadzu to think about some novel ways to do research, which has helped me grow as a researcher,” he said.
In addition to the KOL talks, 49 participants from 15 countries (Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Viet Nam, the United Kingdom, and the United States) were invited to give poster presentations the first day, from which 6 were selected to give short talks the next morning.
One of the selected speakers was Dr. Inȇs C. Santos, a post-doctorate in the Schug lab. She is investigating the microbiome in groundwater across Texas to determine if hydraulic fracturing is contaminating nearby water wells.
“I did my bachelors and masters in microbiology,” she said. “I want to see more microbiologists use Shimadzu equipment. It is easy to use and fast. We have workshops to teach people how to use these tools in their research.”
Besides bringing KOL together, the event also aimed to provide the Emerging Thought Leaders (ETLs) like Dr. Santos who may have only worked with complicated instruments for a year or two, to network with Shimadzu corporation and convey their needs.
As an inaugural summit, Scott Kuzdzal, Director of Marketing at Shimadzu US was pleased with the outcome.
“I personally didn’t know what to expect at this event. I thought the poster presentations and oral presentations were excellent. I go to many trade shows and I don’t see the quality of presentations in some of those conferences that I saw here. I am thoroughly impressed. Both with the scientific presentation quality but also with the level of interaction we saw.”