Forging Ahead in Pharmaceutical Formulations
About a year ago, we had an idea for a new type of meeting, focusing on pharmaceutical formulations and involving our network of experts and customer champions. We also wanted to pull in newer and younger voices. With in-person events unavailable for a while, we decided to try a virtual event where the passion and excitement of the presenters was at the center of it all.
Designing a pharmaceutical conference
We also thought there was an opportunity to revitalize the UK particle conference scene. Up until five years ago, there was a regular UK conference called PSA, arranged by the Particle Characterization Interest Group (PCIG) of the Royal Society of Chemistry. However, there was unlikely to be another event anytime soon, as many the organizers have retired.
As part of the PCIG Committee, I pitched an idea for a particle characterization conference, which would be a collaboration between Malvern Panalytical and the RSC. As such, it would even involve our competitors! We decided to focus this event on pharmaceutical formulations, which is an area with lots of challenges and lots of research. After trying different naming concepts, we decided on ‘The FORGE’.
Sharing passion and ideas
We have asked presenters to inject sense of passion into their talks, explaining why they do what they do, what drives their research, and what excites them about characterization. The FORGE will feature a mix of inspiring plenaries from academics and industrialists, and a mix of talks and posters from the next generation of voices.
Promoting and gathering abstracts for a new event is not easy. The FORGE was originally scheduled for November 2020. However, with only half a dozen abstracts to fit round the plenaries we felt unable to go ahead. Consequently, we rescheduled for 25 March 2021. This gave us time to do more promotion and we subsequently received 30 abstract submissions . These have been whittled down to 17, and the rest will be presented as posters, with a five-minute elevator pitch.
Register now
Please mark the 25th of March in your diary and register now. The event platform has more information, including the full agenda and active discussion boards.
You can pop in to listen to some of the talks, or spend the whole day with us. It’s a format we look forward to testing out in other application areas, too.
The event runs from 10am to 4pm GMT. We look forward to seeing you there.