PITTSBURGH - Pittcon 2011 reported that 17,098 attendees participated in the annual conference and exposition, which was held in Atlanta, GA, March 13-18, 2011. Twenty-five percent of the conferees in attendance were from 87 countries outside the United States.

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

The technical program featured more than 100 invited speakers who 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.

For final statistics on Pittcon 2011 and preliminary information on Pittcon 2012, visit www.pittcon.org.