The Payling Prize is given in recognition of outstanding work in the field of Analytical Glow Discharge and is in memory of Richard Payling who died tragically in a mountaineering accident in February 2004. During his career Richard did much to promote the technique of Glow Discharge, and also the awareness of the scientific community to these developments.
The prize is awarded to the young scientist who gives the best presentation during a meeting of the EW-GDS. It is a financial award, kindly sponsored by the manufacturers of Glow Discharge Instrumentation.
The first Richard Payling Prize was awarded to Gerardo Gamez in 2005 during the European Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry in Budapest, Hungary, for his poster presentation entitled “Analysis of gel electropherograms and blotting membranes via spatially resolved glow discharge optical emission spectrometry” (1). This work was part of Gerado’s PhD work performed in Prof Gary Hieftje’s laboratory at Indiana University-Bloomington, USA.
Antonio Martin was awarded with the Payling prize in 2007, during the 12th European Conference on applications of surface and interface analysis in Brussels. He presented a work titled “Improvement of depth resolution for the analysis of thin layered materials using microsecond pulsed glow discharge time-of-flight mass spectrometry” which corresponded to one of the research topics carried out for his PhD at Oviedo University.
Michael Köster was awarded with the third Payling prize in 2009 for his work presented during the Colloquium Spectroscopicum Internationale XXXVI, and the EW-GDS user meeting.
Rebeca Valledor from Oviedo, Spain, was awarded the Payling prize at the Winter Conference for Plasma Spectrochemistry 2011 in Zaragoza, Spain. She presented her work on the spatially resolved emission produced by a pulsed discharge source used for Mass spectrometry with much enthusiasm and quality. Earlier stages of this work are available in a JAAS article. The photo shows Rebeca Valledor (left) together with her PhD supervisor Nerea Bordel, both from the Laser and Plasma Spectroscopy Research Group, GELP, of the University of Oviedo at the Payling Prize celebration in Zaragoza.
At the Glow Discharge Spectroscopy Symposium held in Kingston-upon-Thames, UK, in 2012, the Payling Prize was presented to Dr Chiara Modanese of NTNU, Norway for her talk entitled “Challenges in GDMS Analyses of PV Silicon Materials”.
Dr Sohail Mushtaq of London Metropolitan University was the next winner of the Payling Prize in 2014 when it was presented at the 2nd International GDS Symposium held in Prague, Czech Republic. His talk was entitled “Effect of Small Quantities of Oxygen in a Neon Glow Discharge”.
The 3rd International GDS Symposium was held in Liverpool, UK, in April 2014. Here the Payling Prize was awarded to Laura Chauvet for the work that was presented in her poster “Preliminary Analytical Results from a DBD Plasma Jet at Atmospheric Pressure Coupled to a TOF-MS”.
At the 4th International Glow Discharge Spectroscopy Symposium, held in Berlin 2018, the Payling Prize was awarded to David Malmstrom of Swerea KIMAB, Sweden, for his entertaining presentation “SCGD – A Technique for In Line Analysis of Metals in Liquids”
At the 5th Symposium, in Oviedo in April 2022 after pandemic delays, was awarded to Kevin Finch of Texas Tech University for his presentation “High Throughput Nanoparticle Detection and Characterization Through Glow Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy Element Mapping.” Kevin originally submitted this as a poster, but he was so enthusiastic about recent results that the Organising Committee had no problem changing it to an Oral Presentation. And that enthusiasm came through and impressed the audience enough to win Kevin the recognition and the Payling Prize. The picture shows Kevin receiving the price from EW-GDS Chair, Peter Robinson.
The 6th International Glow Discharge Spectroscopy Symposium saw us back in Liverpool in 2024, and here the Payling Prize was awarded to Jaroslaw Lepczak of the Tele and Radio Research Institute in Warsaw, Poland, for his poster entitled “Technical Aspects of GD-MS Pixel by Pixel Mapping”.
The picture shows Jaroslaw standing next to his poster and the apparatus used to acquire the data.
A PDF of his poster can be viewed by clicking here