Educators: CRA-W team

Date: 2 - 6 October 2023

Location: Gembloux, Belgium

Contents:
Participants will become familiar with the vibrational spectroscopic technology and statistical concepts used in Chemometric applications.

Most attention will be given to the ideas underlying the different techniques and methods and their application mainly in the agronomical sector. Theoretical considerations and equations will be limited to what is needed to have sufficient insight to properly use the techniques. Most of the examples will be related to application in the food and feed sectors, but the scope is broader.

NIR, MIR and Raman techniques include the use of classical benchtop instrumentation as well as more advanced systems,as systems combined with microscopy and Hyperspectral Imaging, or the most recent handheld devices.

Chemometrics methods include exploratory tools such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA), calibration based methods as Partial Least Squares (PLS) and discriminant techniques such as Support Vector Machines (SVM) among others as well as the figures of merit within the quantitative/qualitative calibration model, topics related to advanced pre-processing, calibration transfer and how to validate/judge model quality.

Learning goals:
The goal of the course is to teach participants about NearInfrared (NIR), Mid-Infrared (MIR) and Raman technologies and how to perform basic multivariate analysis/Chemometrics.

Prerequisites:
Knowledge of basic concepts of mathematics (in particular linear algebra) and statistics is required. Some notions of analytical chemistry and multivariate statistics are a plus.

Keywords: vibrational spectroscopic method, NIR, MIR, Raman, NIR microscopy, hyperspectral Imaging, fluorescence; advanced Chemometric methods

Tools:
The course material will be made available in form of a USBkey containing all the slides and datasets used as examples during the training.