SPEC 2008: Shedding Light on Disease: Optical Diagnosis for the New Millenium
October 25-29, 2008
Recent advances in the biological sciences and medicine have led to an increasing demand for real time and minimally invasive chemical and structural information on biological materials. Due to its unique fingerprinting capability, vibrational spectroscopy plays a significant role in providing these pieces of information.
The aim of the conference is to bring together scientists including biologists, physical chemists, physicists, and physicians who have joined forces in the quest for novel applications of vibrational spectroscopy in biology and medicine, making accessible the specific molecular investigations of complex molecules under difficult experimental conditions.
This is the 5th international conference of a series that was started in 2000 in Winnipeg – Canada, 2002 in Reins – France, 2004 in Newark – USA and in 2006 Heidelberg – Germany.
The topics and methodologies of the conference include but are not confined to:
-Concepts and overview of biomedical vibrational spectroscopy in medicine
-Biomedical vibrational spectroscopy and imaging of single cells
-Drug-cell interaction studied by vibrational spectroscopies
-Pathogens and infectious diseases
-Vibrational clinical chemistry, analysis of biofluids
-Raman, THZ-laser, NIR and MID-IR spectroscopies
-Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS)
-Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy (CARS)
-Near-field infrared and Raman micro-spectroscopy
-Dentistry
-Other spectroscopic techniques
The Conference will be held at the congress center of the Technological Park of Universidade do Vale do Paraíba, Sao Jose dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil. São José dos Campos (600.000 habitants) is a major city in the state of Sao Paulo, and one of the most important industrial and research centers in Latin America. It is located between the two most active production and consumption regions in the country, São Paulo (80 km from the city) and Rio de Janeiro (320 km) in the Paraíba River Valley. It is also located between the two most beautiful touristy places, Ubatuba (90 km) at the Brazilian coast and Campos do Jordão (80km) at the mountain’s regions. With its high per capita income, São José dos Campos is a safe and secure city that offers a wide variety of stores and services.
The Conference will begin on Sunday morning, October 26. On Saturday afternoon October 25, registration is opened and in the evening a reception party will be organized at the Conference Centre.
Also on Saturday a Mini-Workshop scheduled for 2:00 pm covering the topics
• FT- Raman Spectroscopy for biological systems and biomolecules analysis;
• Dispersive Raman systems for “in vivo” measurements in biological systems;
• Optical Tweezers for biological applications;
• Confocal Raman spectroscopy ;
• FTIR analysis using the Perkin-Elmer SpotLight400 system;
where a hands on training guided by specialists in each field will be offered.
For more information, please see the SPEC 2008 website.