ALMA Award
ALMA’s Distinguished Service Award for Analytical Laboratory Management recognizes outstanding service to the profession of analytical laboratory management. It began in 2002 and is sponsored by Agilent Technologies.
2004 Winner
Dr. Thomas Lyttle
The Third ALMA Distinguished Service Award for Analytical Laboratory Management was presented to Dr. Thomas Lyttle at ALMA’s 25th Conference in Wilmington, on November 11, 2004.
Dr. Lyttle is the retired director and coordinator of the instrumentation facility at Tulane University. His special fields are Electronics in Chemistry (Instrumentation), Applied Spectroscopy, and Laboratory Organization and Management. He has also served as the manager of Chemical Instrument Services in the Department of Chemistry at Iowa State University from 1970-1989. He served as director of the Coordinated Instrumentation Facility at Tulane University from 1989-1998.
He established the Tulane university-wide analytical instrumentation laboratory in 1990 and directed up to 13 professionals. Instrumentation included NMR spectrometers; high-resolution mass spec; GC-MS, FT/IR and Raman; IR, and UV-visible spectroscopy; X-ray spectrography and diffractometry; thermal methods, DTA, TGA, DS, gas chromatography, AA, and ICP.
In 1988 he earned the Professional & Scientific Excellence Award and a $1,000 stipend, the highest award of its type that Iowa State University can bestow on its Professional & Scientific personnel.
Dr. Lyttle co-founded ALMA in 1980 with Claude Lucchesi. He served as president of ALMA in 1982 and 1992. In 1981 he hosted the 2nd Annual Conference of ALMA at Iowa State University and in 1991 he hosted the 10th Annual Conference at Tulane University. Beginning in 1986 he made visits every other year to the new Chinese ALMA Organization in 13 Cities. In 1988 he served as a Consultant for NSF Polar Programs on Management of McMurdo Lab in Antarctica. In 1994 he was a member of initial Editorial Board of the ALMA Journal, Managing the Modern Laboratory. In 1999 he received the ALMA Award for Establishing/Maintaining ALMA International presence together with Claude Lucchesi. He helped to establish the first EuroALMA Conference in Oslo and subsequently in Zeist, Netherlands and Berlin, Germany. Dr. Lyttle has published approximately 10 publications on laboratory management in MML, C&E News, and American Laboratory.