In Profile: Peter D. Wentzell, Dalhousie University

Peter Wentzell was born in Moncton, New Brunswick, and was raised on Prince Edward Island. He received his BSc in chemistry from Dalhousie University followed by a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Michigan State University under the direction of Dr Stanley R. Crouch. After receiving his PhD, he was an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr Adrian P. Wade at the University of British Columbia for a year and a half. Dr Wentzell joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at Dalhousie University in 1989, and was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in 1994 and full Professor in 2002. Dr Wentzell has published over fifty research papers in refereed publications and has given nearly 100 invited, contributed or poster presentations at scientific symposia. In 1996 he took the post of Assistant Editor for Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems; in 1998 he was promoted to North American Editor for the journal. Dr Wentzell′s research interests encompass both fundamental and applied aspects of chemometrics and touch on many other areas, including environmental, biological, forensic, and clinical chemistry. Problems of interest include pattern recognition, modelling, multivariate calibration, digital filtering, curve resolution, and optimization. Of particular interest is the exploration of the limitations and potential of such methods in a variety of real-world applications. For more on research in the Wentzell group at Dalhousie, visit: http://www.dal.ca/chemometrics

When did you first become interested in science and for what reason?

I suppose as with many scientists my curiosity about the world around me led to questions that could only be answered by science. I remember as a boy being fascinated by television programs such as ‘The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau’ and David Suzuki’s ‘Science Magazine’. I also remember reading a book entitled ‘Chemistry for the Million’ by Richard F. Smith and being intrigued by the account of Lavoisier’s systematic investigation of chemical phenomena. Of course, my parents investments in a set of encyclopedias, as well as numerous chemistry sets and microscopes, also did much to inspire me.

Do you remember your first experiment and what it involved?

I remember clearly a young and enthusiastic seventh grade teacher named Diane Anderson who assigned us a science project on plants, or rather told us that we needed to devise such a project. My particular project was poorly conceived and the seeds I planted never germinated, although my records were diligently kept. Despite my abysmal performance, I was given a good mark and learned the importance of experimental design and the scientific method, as well as the fact that I was not destined for a career in botany.

Who was inspirational to you in choosing analytical science as your career path?

I am fortunate to count among my colleagues Prof. Louis Ramaley, who also happened to be my undergraduate supervisor and the person who is primarily responsible for directing me to a career in analytical chemistry. There were many later influences, but Lou’s enthusiasm for science and his keen appreciation of the measurement process continue to inspire me even today.

When did you first become interested in chemometrics and for what reason?

My fascination with computers began in high school with a teletype terminal connected to the university computer via an acoustically coupled modem (110 baud). This interest continued through my undergraduate career, although I did not think of the applications much beyond data acquisition and simple regression. In graduate school, a class in applied statistics from my supervisor, Prof. Stan Crouch, helped expand my perspective. The turning point, however, was when a fellow graduate student, Tom Doherty, introduced me to the book ‘Factor Analysis in Chemistry’ by Edmund Malinowski, which showed in a clear and elegant way how chemometric techniques could coax information from complex data sets. This started me thinking about chemical measurements and measurement models in a whole new way. The further influences of Chris Enke, Adrian Wade, Steve Brown and Bruce Kowalski, among others, sealed my fate and I continue to be fascinated every day by the new chemometric challenges presented by analytical problems.

What do you think will be the most profound challenges that analytical scientists face in the next few years?

Analytical science has always been a dynamic discipline. Interdisciplinary and domain-specific knowledge will undoubtedly play greater roles and traditional boundaries have already blurred. Nowhere is this more true than at the interface with biology. The sequencing of genomes in complex organisms is only the beginning. Expanding exploration into gene expression and proteomics will require analytical scientists to rethink problems on a much larger scale and familiarize themselves with the new questions that need to be answered. Massively parallel analytical approaches such as DNA microarrays and hyphenated instrumentation will be the only way to address many of these problems. The development of these systems, together with methods for their validation, standardization, and data interpretation will be at the forefront of challenges to the analytical community.

What are your ultimate goals in research?

In many ways, experimental chemists have been spoiled by being able to study tightly controlled systems with selective signals, a relatively high S/N and good reproducibility. As a consequence, many other fields that have not had these advantages have developed more powerful tools for designing and analyzing experiments. Although we are catching up, chemists still tend to think one-dimensionally. For example, I know of few (if any) chemistry programs that require instruction in the fundamentals of experimental design or multivariate analysis despite the importance of these tools in solving real problems. In a broad sense, our goal is to advance the discipline of chemometrics to address the problems facing analytical scientists. Unfortunately, the subject of data analysis in chemistry is littered with a multitude of techniques that tend to obfuscate rather than simplify and are often empirical in their application.

More specifically, the ultimate objective of our work is to unify the principles of multivariate data analysis through characterization of measurement models, signals and noise. By understanding these aspects of a measurement system, we will be more able to refine the tools for the optimal extraction of the desired information. A good starting point in this regard is Bruce Kowalski’s landmark paper on the ‘Theory of Analytical Chemistry’ (1994) which did much to reconcile traditional approaches to analytical measurement with multivariate approaches. In recent years, a major focus of our research has been on developing models for measurement errors in analytical systems and methods to accommodate them. In our view, the importance of error structure (variance and covariance) is highly underestimated in multivariate measurements and at the heart of many of the difficulties in data analysis. Ultimately, if these issues are addressed, principles of chemometrics should guide the development of new instruments rather than the other way around.

If there is something that you would change in the present publication process what would that be?

There is little doubt that electronic publishing is here to stay and that it will revolutionize the exchange of scientific information. However, with the loss of printed journals from libraries as a cost-cutting measure, archiving becomes a serious consideration. Furthermore, the concept of the scientific journal as a tangible entity will be lost to a new generation of students to whom the distinction between the scientific literature and any other website may be obscured. Beyond this, controlling the quality of published material will be a real challenge. The fact that printed journals are expensive to produce is a good thing in many ways, since it encourages the maintenance of high standards in article quality. As the actual cost of ‘publication’ diminishes, publishers will be under increased pressure to provide greater quantities of published articles to add value to their offerings. This pressure will affect authors, editors and referees in a finite space of real scientific information. Increased demands on editors and referees (a inevitable bottleneck) may be detrimental to the quality of published work. Finally, publishers (who are, after all, in business) are likely to continue to drive up costs to the subscriber and try to establish monopolies through large scale licensing agreements.

Referees, in particular, are the backbone of the peer review process and need to have better recognition for doing a good job. Currently, referees provide their services in the interest of advancing science, but finding individuals who are willing to serve in this capacity becomes increasingly difficult as the sheer volume of manuscripts begins to interfere with their other duties. Academic (and other) institutions need to recognize the importance of this role. I think that the scientific community, as a principal stakeholder in scientific publishing, needs to take greater control of the publication process by exerting pressure on commercial publishers and providing greater recognition of the merits of society journals as a medium for publication.

If there is something that you would change in the present grant application process what would that be?

There has been a shift in recent years by granting agencies to short-term programs targeted towards specific goals of strategic interest and large-scale initiatives directed towards networks of research expertise. While such expensive programs are certainly politically fashionable and justified in terms of societal needs, it is essential to recognize that a core element of research in science depends on a sustained long-term course of research which may not have an immediate short-term dividend. The indirect benefits to society of supporting such programs in ‘fundamental research’ may not be as readily apparent, but they are real and critical to the maintenance of a productive scientific infrastructure.

In Canada, we are fortunate to have a program of Discovery Grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council that supports such open-ended inquiry, based on streamlined grant application procedures that emphasize merit, innovation and contributions to the training of a skilled workforce. At the same time, other programs provide more substantial support for major collaborative initiatives and infrastructure. I think that such a parallel approach (while inevitably underfunded) represents a near optimal way to support scientific research.

Peter’s research group (L–R): Marc Leger, Tobias Karakach, Peter Wentzell and Lorenzo Vega Montoto

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