I'm a bit burnt out talking about "AI", but I've developed a new (figurative) litmus test for when it is and is not appropriate to use an AI chatbot for white collar scientific work. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗱 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁: If you replaced the name of whatever AI …

𝐐&𝐀 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐬

𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: What is the actual novelty of lean chemometrics?

𝐀𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫: The novel aspect of lean chemometrics is not in the mathematics, but rather in the formalization of a framework that…

It’s been a while since I've had the pleasure of welcoming a new team member. The opportunity to welcome Adam Waněk to our team coincided with my participation in the 7th APV Continuous Manufacturing Conference, which caused a scheduling conflict. But hey….

𝗗𝗲𝗺𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗔𝗧

The way PAT practitioners talk about spectroscopic PAT can sometimes sound a bit like magic. We promise stakeholders that, by simply shining a light on material during a manufacturing process…

𝐐&𝐀 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐬
𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: How does lean chemometrics support spectroscopic PAT adoption in pharmaceutical manufacturing?

𝐀𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫: Despite the many reports and demonstrations of the benefits….

𝐐&𝐀 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐬
𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Isn’t lean chemometrics actually just “lean AI”?

𝐀𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫: As a chemometrician, I prefer to regard AI and chemometrics as distinct fields when it comes to chemical data analysis, although…

Back to PAT Basics!

At some point in your tenure as a PAT practitioner, the output of a PAT method and the output of another method will be different. Someone will ask…

𝐐&𝐀 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐬
𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: What identifies any data analysis technique as “lean chemometrics”? 

𝐀𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫: It is worth stating upfront that there is not a canonical list of lean…

𝐐&𝐀 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐬
𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Will lean chemometrics replace conventional chemometrics like PLS for PAT analysis?

𝐀𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫: The short answer is no, the intention…

Back to PAT Basics!
One question I frequently get asked is “How much instrument performance do I need for this PAT application?” I don’t like this question as “performance” is a bit of a loaded term. Instead, I’ll usually ask in response, “What does a sucessful…

The Sentronic team is rested and recovered after another great IFPAC. Thanks to everyone who swung by the booth, said "Hi!" in the hallway or at the bar, or attended one of our talks! 

One thing I… 

Trigger warning: Two Sentronicians at a conference. 😃

After busy weeks and just days after IFPAC, Uwe Kirschner and I joined the PAT Connect, hosted by TTC.
The event started just a few hours ago, and it's …

Folks on LinkedIn seem to enjoy discussing AI. I routinely see a lot of very high-level posts and I'm fortunate to also see a lot of technical posts discussing the finer points of emerging algorithms. 

What I see a lot less of…

Ready for IFPAC? We are!*

For more than 20 years, this has been the time of year to join the PAT community at IFPAC – and of course, we’ll be there again, exhibiting as usual.

Adam Rish and Owen Rehrauer will be sharing…

Back to PAT Basics!

NIR PAT is commonly used to monitor the bin blending of pharmaceuticals. In this application, changes in NIR spectral variance during blending can be correlated to blending end point or multivariate data analytical methods can be used to estimate API or lubricant potency…
 

For folks attending IFPAC Global, please consider attending my talk in the "PAT and Advanced Manufacturing" session on Wednesday morning. In it, I'll demonstrate that NIR PAT measurements can be used to determine blending endpoint and blend potency in a Gericke Group mini blender…

I am pleased to share that our recent publication "Lean Chemometric in Spectroscopic Process Analytical Technology" qualified for a Featured Cover with the Journal of Chemometrics. Be sure to visit Sentronic at IFPAC if…

The upcoming IFPAC 2026 conference is looking to be an exciting one! I greatly look forward to again exhibiting alongside my colleagues from Sentronic and presenting in the COPA (Chemometrics for Online Process Analysis) session chaired by Brian Rohrback on Tuesday PM. My talk… 

Back to PAT Basics!

With new PAT users, I tend to emphasize applications where PAT is used to gain an understanding of a process or generate information that's used as an in-process control (IPC). These applications …

Back to PAT Basics!

A comment on my last LinkedIn post highlighted that PAT scientists in pharmaceutical manufacturing need a broad background to be successful. Let's expand on that!
In my experience,…

As someone who routinely helps companies deploy NIR PAT for pharmaceutical manufacturing, I often get the question "How mature is NIR PAT technology?". 

I understand where this question is coming from: no…

A dense day and a great experience. Thanks to Joachim, Cosima Fink and Olivier Paquet-Durand for the warm hospitality and great collaboration  — really enjoyed it!
 

We granulated three…

Back to PAT Basics!

We routinely get questions around how frequently a reference should be collected with Sentronic NIR systems. This is complicated…

Today we spiked the Glatt Fluid Bed Processor with three NIR PAT systems!

The instruments are warming up now and waiting for our trials starting tomorrow morning — which means …

Our article "Lean Chemometrics in Spectroscopic Process Analytical Technology" has been published in the Journal of Chemometrics! You can find a free readable version of the article via this…

Back to PAT Basics!

I recently got a question from a new PAT scientist: "How much fancy math do I have to know to be successful in using PAT?"…
 

It's Friday at lunch time and I decided to scroll through my LinkedIn feed. Roughly 50% of my feed is topics in artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML). In speaking with friends, colleagues, and customers, I notice that there's a lot of confusion about the terms AI/ML …

Back to PAT Basics!

Happy New Year, everybody! It's a new year and time for a new entry in this series. Today, I want to answer a very good question I got from someone new to NIR PAT: What is NIR actually measuring? Why…

Back to PAT Basics!

There's a lot of very technical topics to still touch on, but today, I want to focus on a matter of practical importance. Namely, the advantage of using internal, rather than external, intensity standards in pharma PAT applications…

Back to PAT Basics!

Today, we're going to start with the most basic question in PAT: Why use PAT?

This is related to a common question, "Does it make sense to do PAT for this application?". The answer is…

📈 𝗜𝗢𝗧 𝗙𝗔𝗤 (𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗔𝗰𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘆𝗺𝘀) 📈

Our rolling FAQ on iterative optimization technology (IOT)…

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗜 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗜𝗢𝗧 𝘃𝘀. 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱, 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗖𝗟𝗦?

When IOT gets you "better"…

Back to PAT Basics!

I missed September (for my German/European friends) and October (for my American friends) to make an 𝘖𝘬𝘵𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘴𝘵 joke about Beer's Law, so I'll skip the joke and get right into it. Let's talk about Beer's Law…
 

Back to PAT Basics!

We've talked a lot about bin blending but today let's mix it up and talk about another unit operation. Let's focus on a hot topic in pharmaceutical PAT: measurements in the feed frame of a tablet press…

Back to PAT Basics!

A common question in NIR PAT for bin blending is, "If I'm using a moving block standard deviation to monitor blending, how big should my block be?"
The answer…

The Sentronic US team is back from SciX 2025, where we gave and contributed to several talks on implementations and innovations in iterative optimization technology (IOT). The Q+A sessions…

Back to PAT Basics!

Bin blending is a bit of a hot topic for Sentronic at the moment. We had a great first SentroConnect Live webinar (link to the YouTube video in the comments), which covered using the basics of using NIR as a PAT tool…

📈 𝗜𝗢𝗧 𝗙𝗔𝗤 (𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗔𝗰𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘆𝗺𝘀) 📈

We've seen a lot of interest in Iterative Optimization Technology (IOT) recently. However, there's still some confusion … 
 

Even with just getting home from APACT, I am already gearing up for the next conference: SciX 2025 in Convinton, KY! I will exhibiting at the Sentronic booth alongside…

Adam J. Rish and Jonique Samuels gave talks on Lean Chemometric approaches at APACT. I know both Sam Henson and I have also spoken publicly on the topic. The term "Lean Chemometrics" seems to be generating some buzz, but also some confusion… 

Back to PAT Basics!

We've discussed a lot of NIR PAT applications that detect chemical changes in a sample. Did you know NIR can also detect physical changes in a sample? Let's talk about how that can be useful…

Back to PAT Basics!

I've seen a lot of new PAT scientists collect spectral data, put it into a chemometric software package, and go "... and now what?". Maybe they know they ought to run a specific analysis (e.g., PCA) and know where the button…

Back to PAT Basics!

In last week's post, we discussed some simple plausibility checks for NIR data to help ensure the resulting data analysis is worthwhile to perform. So, let's assume you have NIR data that's ready for analysis. Now what?…

Back to PAT Basics!

It's the start of the school year here in the US, which also means we're in the September-to-December push in the pharmaceutical industry...

Back to PAT basics!

Pharmaceutical continuous manufacturing (CM) greatly benefits from and almost always requires PAT. One of the most common PAT modalities in pharma CM is NIR PAT. Sentronic has had a lot of success…

In just over a month, the Sentronic US team will be attending the APACT conference in Glasgow. Additionally, Adam J. Rish, Mike Reinhalter, and Steve Hammond will…

Back to PAT basics!

We're seeing an influx of new interest in NIR PAT in the pharmaceutical industry. This is great news! However, people taking their first steps into PAT have a lot of (good) questions about PAT basics…

🎥 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗣𝗔𝗧 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗼𝗻 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗧𝘂𝗯𝗲! 🚀

Missed the PAT Meeting we hosted last year? Or want to rewatch one of the great talks?

We’ve just uploaded the recordings …

In life and chemometrics, perspective matters.

As I branch out from the pharmaceutical industry, I'm learning that there's assumptions I've internalized as "normal" that are very much not normal for other application areas. I may speak…

I'm wrapping up a week of travel across the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. It's been great to see some old friends, some current installations of PAT, and see some PAT solutions used by people outside the pharmaceutical industry. On a personal note… 

“Need real-time insight during pharmaceutical solid-dose processing? SentroPAT FO by Sentronic, a multichannel diode array NIR analyser for direct process monitoring.”…

Today's post is going to buck the trend of "Something old / something new", as it's a bit of a self-contained story that wouldn't benefit from that framing…

Plug & Play for PAT: NIR integration just got easier!

I had the pleasure of testing our new embedded software on SentroPAT Compact and SentroPAT DA…

Today in "Something old/something new" in chemometrics/PAT, I want to talk about a perennial problem in pharmaceutical PAT practice and suggest a different approach for managing it.

👴 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗹𝗱:…

It's been suggested by some colleagues that I ought to post here more. I like having some structure to what I post on LinkedIn in order to keep my posts focused. So, get ready for the summer of "Something Old, Something New in NIR/Chemometrics". Today's post…

This was an outstanding event! It was my great pleasure to present some information on hashtag#LeanChemometrics at this research day. I also really enjoyed hearing about…

NIR 2025 has now gone down in the history books, and I'm delighted to have played a small part in such a well-organised conference in such a great location with so many fascinating talks. I really enjoyed it,…

We just finished setting up our booth at NIR2025!

I’ve been to exhibitions where the tables were bigger, but luckily, we've put a lot of effort into miniaturizing our systems over the last few years.….

Peanuts for NIR 2025 in Rome! 🥜

Yep, not just peanuts… We’re in full “nutty” mode as we hustle to get ready for the NIR Conference next week. On Monday, we set ourselves a crack-the-code challenge: run our brand-new Support Vector Machine Classification (SVM-C) …

Yesterday I was able to take part in the 16th Rewe Team Challenge for our company Sentronic for the first time with my dear colleagues Claudia, Henryk and Uwe Kirschner…

I've been working with the University of Ghent for many years and I've had many interesting discussions with many PhD students - often these discussions continued after they finished their thesis. But that's another story.

While I was always aware of the work being done….

𝗡𝗼 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗘𝗴𝗴𝘀 — 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗣𝗔𝗧 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗹𝗼𝗴 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗬𝗼𝘂!

At least in Germany, it’s a very common tradition for the Easter Bunny to hide eggs, sweets, and nowadays…

Relaxing my way after APV at Novartis in Basel —

running along the River Rhine on a pleasant spring evening after two intense days at a very well-run conference on Continuous Manufacturing in Pharma…

I had a great time at the Advancing Access to Medicine event held by RCPE - Research Center Pharmaceutical Engineering GmbH last week…

👟 Back to Italy — after 26 years!

My very worn-out cotton running shirt just reminded me: the last time I attended the ICNIRS NIR conference…

I'm excited to be participating in RCPE's upcoming AATM event in Washington, DC from April 1st to April 2nd. The speaker list looks quite interesting and I'm excited to hear more about how others in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry are using analytics in novel ways to speed up and improve process development…

A belated but very warm welcome to our new website! 🎉🌐

🚀 Today, I’m wearing my developer hat again!

On my way to Embedded World in Nuremberg—always a highlight

IFPAC 2025 is a wrap!

Just two days ago, IFPAC 2025 came to a close. Once again, it was a …

Day 2 @IFPAC 2025 – busy times in the exhibit hall during session breaks and a total of three talks given by Sentronic. 

Time to say goodbye!

Our current website has grown old over the years—so old, in fact, that some…

✈️ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿?!? ✈️

I'm just about to fly out from Germany on my annual trip to 𝗜𝗙𝗣𝗔𝗖.

We’ll need a lot of caffeine tomorrow!

Not only because it’s been late nights for some of us, but also because

Almost exactly one year ago, we shared one of the photos below as the first invitation to the Sentronic PAT Meeting 2024 and the Striezelmarket. While the Christmas Market is still ongoing, the Sentronic PAT Meeting 2024

Visit us at IFPAC in Bethesda, MD!

We’re excited for another IFPAC and look

We’re all set-up at #SciX2024 and looking forward to seeing some great talks! Check us out at Booth 610 to learn about our latest NIR PAT offerings

Amazing to see what our creative head has created here! Being involved