Congrats to Linda Thienpont

Posted by Sten Westgard, MS

Congratulations to Dr. Linda Thienpont, a great friend of the Website and a leading voice on standardizatino. At the IFCC Berline conference, she will be given the Robert Schaffer award for Outstanding Achievements in the Development of Standards:

From the press release:

"IFCC, the leading organization in the field of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine worldwide, today announced that Professor Linda THIENPONT, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium, is the winner of the 2011 IFCC-Robert Schaffer Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Development of Standards for Use in Laboratory Medicine.

"The 2011 IFCC - Robert Schaffer Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Development of Standards for Use in Laboratory Medicine, co-sponsored by NIST and CLSI, recognizes specifically an individual who has made outstanding and unique contributions to the advancement of reference methods and/or reference materials for laboratory medicine to facilitate improved quality of clinical diagnostics and therapies, which would in turn lead to reduced costs and improved patient care. Linda Thienpont, Professor of Analytical Chemistry and Director of the Analytical Chemistry Reference Laboratory at the University of Ghent in Belgium, has shown exceptional leadership in the development of reference measurement procedures for clinical laboratory testing. She has published over 100 peer reviewed papers in the area of analytical method development and standardization and participated as invited speaker at many major medical and clinical congresses throughout the world. She has a long and distinguished record of developing standard methods and reference materials for use in measuring a large number of analytes, including steroid and thyroid hormones, and a number of other analytes.

"Prof. Chris Lam, Chairman IFCC Awards Committee, said: “We are delighted in electing Professor
Thienpont for the 2011 IFCC - Robert Schaffer Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Development of Standards for Use in Laboratory Medicine. Professor Thienpont has a well established international reputation and archievements as a leading expert in the field of standardization and harmonization. She is an active contributor and pioneer to policies and experimental protocols needed to implement standardization”."

Linda has been a strong voice for quality and accuracy and well-deserves this award.