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Analytical chemistry has changed tremendously in the past decade.
No longer is analysis solely the domain of formally trained analytical
chemists. Today, scientists from an increasingly broad array of disciplines are
using analysis and analytical techniques to solve increasingly varied problems.
The current exploration of Mars provides a vivid example of how the discipline
has changed: on the Mars project, multidisciplinary teams of
geologists, paleobiologists, astronomers, and chemists work together to study
heterogeneous samples of limited size using a broad array of recently developed
experimental techniques in order to answer questions of fundamental interest to
everyone on our planet.
These changes and concerns
regarding the equipping of America's future technological workforce, raised by
the National Science Foundation in its 1996 report
Shaping the Future, were the motivation for a series of
workshops, funded by the NSF's DUE and Division of Chemistry, held this past year.
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