Pierre-Hugues Stefanuto, Lead Scientist and Lecturer, University of Liège, Belgium
Analytical science remains underrepresented in higher education and is too often perceived as a supporting discipline rather than a driver of innovation. This contributes to a shortage of well-trained analytical scientists. I also believe stronger analytical expertise is essential to address the reproducibility crisis through rigorous measurement, validation, and data quality.
Frederik André Hansen, Postdoctoral Fellow (Tenure Track), Department of Pharmacy, University of Oslo, Norway
The biggest challenge facing analytical science depends somewhat on whose perspective you take. From an academic standpoint, I believe our field is sometimes undervalued by researchers in other areas of chemistry and biology, where analytical scientists may be viewed primarily as service providers who generate data to answer the “real” chemical or biological questions. However, I would describe this as chemical analysis rather than analytical chemistry. Analytical chemistry is fundamentally concerned with developing new technologies and methodologies that push the limits of what can be measured, or that improve the performance, accessibility, and sustainability of existing measurement technologies. This distinction becomes particularly important when such perceptions influence funding priorities and grant review processes, potentially leading to the underestimation of the scientific innovation and impact that analytical chemistry contributes.
Ansgar Korf, CEO and Co-Founder, mzio GmbH, Germany
That analytical science is still widely treated as support rather than as a scientific contribution in its own right. The analytical step is often where the real measurement problem sits, but in project plans it appears as support to be delivered rather than a question to be answered. The consequences follow from there: method development is undervalued, analytical expertise is counted as cost, and the software the field runs on is funded as a research byproduct rather than as infrastructure. That is a recognition problem, not a technical one, and it limits what the field can do.
Katelynn Perrault Uptmor, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Nontargeted Separations Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, William & Mary, USA
I believe the biggest challenge facing analytical science is developing the next generation of analytical chemists. Our discipline underpins advances across chemistry, biology, medicine, environmental science, aerospace science and more – yet it often receives less visibility than the fields it enables, or than other disciplines in chemistry. Fewer students are introduced to analytical chemistry early in their training, which makes it harder to attract and retain talented scientists. As instrumentation and data become increasingly sophisticated, the need for chemists who can make reliable measurements and extract meaningful information from complex data has never been greater.
James Grinias, Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Rowan University, USA
Ensuring that the next generation of analytical scientists is properly trained for tomorrow's workforce is always an ongoing concern in the field. As the number of training options for early career scientists continues to drop, current leaders in the field must continue to ensure that there are viable ways for students to learn fundamental theory and practice hands-on laboratory techniques. Although many see separation science as a mature field, understanding the basics of chromatography and sample preparation will always be essential for developing new analytical methods.
Michael Marty, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
The biggest challenge facing analytical science is training the next generation. Driven by rising costs and shrinking funding, a lot of graduate programs have shrunk over the last few years. At the same time, students are coping with a range of challenges stimming from the lingering effects of COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of generative AI, and their own rising costs. It is harder than ever to attract talented international students to the US. Much of graduate education depends on a critical mass of students (from teaching classes to maintaining core facilities to scheduling seminars), and my fear is that programs will start to drop below this threshold of viability. Fewer and smaller programs mean that some who want to pursue a PhD will find it inaccessible, fewer new PIs will have the opportunity to start their own labs, existing PIs will struggle to maintain research programs, and employers will find it hard to hire people with the right skills. It also means that new startups, innovation, and entrepreneurship will slow. Everyone loses. We all need to work together to make sure we have a robust ecosystem for training and promoting the next generation.
David Clases, University Professor, University of Graz, Austria
I come from the field of analytical chemistry, which represents one of the largest areas of employment for chemists. Yet, its academic representation is comparatively small when compared with the other chemistry disciplines. At the same time, and especially in modern instrumental analytical chemistry, the analytical sciences rely on high-end infrastructure, specialised personnel, substantial space as well as considerable running costs. This often puts us in a defensive position where we have to explain and justify – and rightfully so – our research, its value and the associated expenses. However, especially at a time of tightening budgets, the analytical disciplines must find effective ways to clearly communicate and demonstrate their value to science, society and industry. Otherwise, we will risk weakening the expertise and infrastructure on which many other disciplines and industries are built.
Jonathan Maurer, Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Western Switzerland, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Analytical science, like science more broadly, increasingly faces the challenge of limited resources. Reduced funding, rising costs for instrumentation, consumables, energy, and publication all put growing pressure on academic laboratories. At the same time, the questions we are expected to answer are becoming more complex. We therefore have to find ways to do more, and better, with less.
Edward Sisco, Research Chemist, U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA
I think the biggest challenge facing analytical science today is similar to the challenges facing many other sectors – the never-ending push to do more with less. Less staffing, lower budgets, more expensive instrumentation and consumables, and more red tape all make conducting research more difficult. These challenges cause us to lose our most valuable resource – time.
Finding the time to slow down and think through problems, to iterate on possible solutions, to have deep and meaningful discussions with colleagues is regularly derailed by the need to answer emails, publish the next paper, or attend the pre-meeting for the meeting. Doing meaningful research takes uninterrupted time, focus, and collaboration.
Natalia Manousi, Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, TU Wien, Austria
One of the biggest challenge today is the wide adoption of AI among next generation analytical chemists. We need to understand that the challenge is the risk of confusing easy access to information with understanding, and not AI itself. Future analytical chemists will have unprecedented access to instant answers, but they still need the knowledge to question those answers, identify mistakes, and understand the underlying analytical chemistry principles and fundamentals.
Daniel Petras, Assistant Professor, University of California, Riverside, USA
While I think that gen AI offers huge potential to revolutionize science and future discoveries, I think there are also tremendous challenges ahead of us. Besides fundamental uncertainties for society as a whole, I think that, especially for the training of future scientists, the responsible use of gen AI is challenging. I am afraid that it will be harder for students (and most of us) to build up fundamental knowledge and not outsource the most basic understanding and skills to LLMs.
Caitlin Cain, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Virginia, USA
Our biggest challenge is fostering unity across analytical science. It is easy for research communities to become siloed and treat a single technique as the "be-all and end-all." In reality, no single platform can capture the full picture. I believe integrating complementary instrumental techniques is essential to yielding richer, more reliable insights into complex chemical systems.
Henry Day, Senior Staff Scientist, Illumina, Cambridge, UK
The pace of innovation in biotechnology and chemical biology has been incredible, bringing ever-greater analytical complexity. Whether it is larger molecules, lower concentration limits, or an expanding variety of formulations and matrices, analytical scientists face a broad range of challenges. At the same time, research is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary and rarely does a single technique provide the full answer. Today’s analytical scientists need to be able to interpret and consolidate multiple types of data from multiple sources to translate that data into meaningful scientific understanding of a problem.
Alexandre Goyon, Senior Principal Scientist, Genentech, USA
The biggest challenge is keeping pace with the rapid diversification of drug modalities while safely accelerating development timelines. Adapting traditional analytical frameworks to novel, complex molecules under compressed schedules creates significant uncertainty, requiring scientists to balance technological adoption with unwavering technical rigor.
Adrián de la Fuente Ballesteros, Postdoctoral Researcher in Analytical Chemistry, TESEA Research Group, University of Valladolid, Spain
First, we need to keep up with emerging contaminants. New chemicals are constantly appearing, but developing validated methods, certified reference materials, and regulations takes much longer. As analytical scientists, we have to detect these compounds at lower concentrations, which is not always easy.
Another challenge is funding. High-quality analytical research is expensive, and modern instruments, maintenance, consumables, reference standards, and skilled personnel all require continuous investment. Without adequate funding, it's difficult to develop innovative methods or keep laboratories competitive.
I also believe we need to improve the transfer of analytical research from universities to society. Every year we publish many new analytical methods, but only a small fraction are adopted by industry, routine laboratories, or regulatory agencies. Finally, analytical science is generating a lot of data, so we need better strategies to manage, share, and reuse these data.
Laura Carbonell-Rozas, R&D and Innovation Manager, Tentamus Iberia, Tentamus Group, Spain
One of the biggest challenges is the gap between technological innovation and routine implementation. We are developing increasingly powerful analytical platforms, but methods must ultimately be robust, transferable, cost-effective and practical for routine laboratories. At the same time, analytical science needs to address its own environmental impact. I think the future is not simply about achieving better sensitivity, but about achieving the right balance between analytical performance, sustainability and practicality under the scope of the White Analytical Chemistry.
Francesca Rigano, Assistant Professor, Messina Institute of Technology, Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences, University of Messina, Italy
I believe the biggest challenge facing analytical science today is no longer generating innovation, but transferring it into routine practice. New analytical methods are developed much faster than they can be validated, standardized, and accepted by regulatory bodies. Strengthening collaboration among academia, industry, and regulatory agencies is therefore essential to shorten this gap and translate scientific advances into official analytical protocols.
Gert IJsbrand Salentijn, Associate Professor, Analytical Chemistry, Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands
The biggest challenge is no longer achieving extraordinary analytical performance. We already know how to do that. The challenge is ensuring that analytical capability remains accessible. Analytical workflows are becoming increasingly complex and dependent on expensive instrumentation, large data infrastructures and specialized expertise, while funding resources face growing pressure. Together, these trends risk concentrating analytical capability in a relatively small number of laboratories. I believe progress should be measured not only by how much chemistry we can observe, but also by how effectively we can make analytical capability available to both society and the wider scientific community.
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