The FACSS Governing Board presents the Distinguished Service Award to an individual who has demonstrated exceptional, long-term service to the FACSS organization. Typically, that person will have served with excellence in many different capacities and will have contributed to the continuing success of FACSS through consistent dedication and sacrifice. The Distinguished Service Award has been awarded since 1993.
Doug Gilman
Doug Gilman attended his first FACSS Conference in 1992 in Philadelphia and gave his first oral presentation at a scientific conference as a Ph.D. student at FACSS 1993 in Detroit. Mike Carrabba and Mark Hayes recruited Doug for his first volunteer assignment at FACSS 2000 in Nashville – presiding at a session called “Chemical Speciation”. Attending FACSS, presenting at FACSS, and volunteering at FACSS escalated from there. Doug was Program Chair at FACSS 2006 at Disney World. He agrees with other FACSS veterans who state that this is the most demanding job at FACSS and the job most central to the conference. During the 3-year span of the 1-year Program Chair job, he was present for early discussions about renaming and rebranding the FACSS Conference. In 2008, Doug was asked if he would agree to run for Governing Board Chair. What he didn’t know was the 1-year term had been increased to 2 years. A 1-year term that actually lasted 4 years had expanded to 8 years. Doug was Governing Board Chair for FACSS 2010 in Raleigh and for the 2011 Reno meeting where the FACSS Conference was rebranded as SCIX. In addition to helping shepherd the complex rebranding effort, Doug was “in the room” when the FACSS Innovation Awards and the closing Friday morning session were created. After over 15 years of nearly continuous and always rewarding service to FACSS, Doug’s behind the scenes involvement wound down. After completing his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Penn State (sitting next to Mark Hayes) and a postdoc, Doug was a faculty member at the Tennessee and LSU for 24 years. In 2021, Doug left “professoring” and moved to Charlotte, NC, when his better half, Indu Kheterpal (also an analytical chemist), started a new role there. He is spending his turn as the trailing spouse putting both his academic and FACSS experience to good use, writing grants at a nonprofit in Charlotte called Camino. Doug and Indu’s two children, Rohin and Priya are in college at LSU and Alabama, respectively.
Greg Klunder
Greg Klunder is currently a staff scientist working in the Forensics Science Center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. As a grad student working for Charles Boss at North Carolina State University, Greg attended his first FACSS in 1988 in Boston. Through the networking opportunities at FACSS, he met Rick Russo who offered him a post-doc opportunity at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California. He then moved to LLNL where he has since been working in the Forensic Science Center and working with other programs at the Laboratory. He research has spanned numerous analytical disciplines including laser spectroscopy, atomic spectroscopy, separations, mass spectrometry, and VisNIR, FTIR and Raman spectroscopy,
Greg has served FACSS/SciX in several capacities over the years.
In addition to these roles, he’s also served on the Executive Committee, as a poster judge, member of the long-range planning and budget committees. As an avid cyclist, he also started the pre-SciX bike rides which provides a fun healthy networking event prior to the conference and will hopefully resume in 2022.
A candidate for the Distinguished Service Award must be nominated via a written petition, which enumerates the candidate's major contributions.
2020 No award given
2019 No award given
2018 Ian Lewis
2017 Diane Parry
2016 John Chalmers, John Graham, Jim Rydzak
2015 Michael Blades, Gary Brewer and Keith Olson
2014 Ron Williams and Edward J. Havlena
2013 Mark A. Hayes and Cynthia M. Lilly
2012 O Karmie Galle and Bruce Chase
2011 Patricia B. Coleman and Jon W. Carnahan
2010 Scott McGeorge and Alexander Scheeline
2009 Paul Bourassa and Mike Carrabba
2003 Jeanette Grasselli Brown
2001 David Coleman
1994 L. Felix Schneider
1993 Edward Brame and Syd Fleming