In this episode, podcast co-hosts Dr. Dwight Stoll and Dr. James Grinias talk with Professor Luis Colon. Dr. Colon is is the SUNY Distinguished Professor, A. Conger Goodyear Professor, and Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo. He received his bachelors degree from University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, and then received the Ph.D. from UMass Lowell. He also was a postdoctoral fellow in the Zare Group at Stanford where did groundbreaking work in detection for capillary electrophoresis. Colon has won numerous awards, including most recently the Kirkland Award in Chromatography (formerly known as the ACS Award in Chromatography), which we celebrated at the ACS Fall 2025 National Meeting.
In a fascinating conversation, we discuss the influence of Luis’ father on his scientific career, by demonstrating to Luis (whether he realized it at the time or not) a physical separation of coffee shells and beans in the wind. Dr. Colon explains the origins of his interest in materials development for chromatography, which included observations he made on the relatively short lifetimes and fragility of silica-based materials while working in industry early in his career. We also spend a good bit of time discussing Prof. Colon’s motivations for an approach to mentoring younger scientists, as well as some of his thoughts about the future of the separation science field. Finally, Luis shares some of his wisdom gained over several decades as a successful and well recognized analytical scientist, emphasizing the importance of curiosity, collaboration, and open-mindedness.
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In this episode, podcast co-hosts Dr. Dwight Stoll and Dr. James Grinias talk with Professor Luis Colon. Dr. Colon is is the SUNY Distinguished Professor, A. Conger Goodyear Professor, and Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo. He received his bachelors degree from University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, and then received the Ph.D. from UMass Lowell. He also was a postdoctoral fellow in the Zare Group at Stanford where did groundbreaking work in detection for capillary electrophoresis. Colon has won numerous awards, including most recently the Kirkland Award in Chromatography (formerly known as the ACS Award in Chromatography), which we celebrated at the ACS Fall 2025 National Meeting.
In a fascinating conversation, we discuss the influence of Luis’ father on his scientific career, by demonstrating to Luis (whether he realized it at the time or not) a physical separation of coffee shells and beans in the wind. Dr. Colon explains the origins of his interest in materials development for chromatography, which included observations he made on the relatively short lifetimes and fragility of silica-based materials while working in industry early in his career. We also spend a good bit of time discussing Prof. Colon’s motivations for an approach to mentoring younger scientists, as well as some of his thoughts about the future of the separation science field. Finally, Luis shares some of his wisdom gained over several decades as a successful and well recognized analytical scientist, emphasizing the importance of curiosity, collaboration, and open-mindedness.
Ep. 30: The Potential of Generative A.I. as a Research Assistant for Measurement Science
Analytically Speaking
41 minutes 12 seconds
1 year ago
Ep. 30: The Potential of Generative A.I. as a Research Assistant for Measurement Science
In this episode, podcast co-hosts Dr. Dwight Stoll and Dr. James Grinias talk with Dr. Farooq Wahab, Research Engineering Scientist at the University of Texas at Arlington. Wahab has interests and expertise in chiral separations, improving the green-ness of chromatographic separations, new detectors for chromatography such as microwave rotational spectroscopy, and new techniques for signal processing in chromatography, among other areas. He and several coauthors recently published a paper in Analytical Chemistry discussing their experiences using generative artificial intelligence (i.e. chatGPT) as a research assistant when working on tasks in measurement science ranging from extraction of rotational microwave spectra from free induction decay signals, to baseline removal from chromatographic data.
In the conversation we talk about the origins of this study, strengths and weaknesses of chatGPT as a research assistant in the analytical chemistry space, and the role of generative AI in chemistry teaching and learning. We also touch on tips and tricks also published by Wahab and coworkers for dealing with equations and symbol-heavy text when using generative AI tools. One very interesting application of these tricks is in the translation of relatively old (decades) papers that were published before English became the standard language for much of science publication.
Analytically Speaking
In this episode, podcast co-hosts Dr. Dwight Stoll and Dr. James Grinias talk with Professor Luis Colon. Dr. Colon is is the SUNY Distinguished Professor, A. Conger Goodyear Professor, and Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo. He received his bachelors degree from University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, and then received the Ph.D. from UMass Lowell. He also was a postdoctoral fellow in the Zare Group at Stanford where did groundbreaking work in detection for capillary electrophoresis. Colon has won numerous awards, including most recently the Kirkland Award in Chromatography (formerly known as the ACS Award in Chromatography), which we celebrated at the ACS Fall 2025 National Meeting.
In a fascinating conversation, we discuss the influence of Luis’ father on his scientific career, by demonstrating to Luis (whether he realized it at the time or not) a physical separation of coffee shells and beans in the wind. Dr. Colon explains the origins of his interest in materials development for chromatography, which included observations he made on the relatively short lifetimes and fragility of silica-based materials while working in industry early in his career. We also spend a good bit of time discussing Prof. Colon’s motivations for an approach to mentoring younger scientists, as well as some of his thoughts about the future of the separation science field. Finally, Luis shares some of his wisdom gained over several decades as a successful and well recognized analytical scientist, emphasizing the importance of curiosity, collaboration, and open-mindedness.
