FACSS Distinguished Service Award

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.

2021 Distinguished Service Award RecipientS

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.

• Forensics Section Chair (2004, 2011-2019)
• Atomic Spectroscopy Section Chair (2008)
• FACSS Awards chair (2007 Memphis)
• FACSS Program Chair (2008 Reno)
• FACSS Past Program Chair (2009 Louisville)
• FACSS General Chair (2011 Reno)
• FACSS Governing Board Chair Elect Elect (2011)
• FACSS Governing Board Chair Elect (2012-2013)
• FACSS Governing Board Chair (2014-2015)
• FACSS Past Governing Board Chair (2016-2017)
• FACSS Past Past Governing Board Chair (2018-2019)

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.

NOMINATIONS

A candidate for the Distinguished Service Award must be nominated via a written petition, which enumerates the candidate's major contributions.

• The petition must be signed by at least four delegates, each representing a different member organization of FACSS. 
• The signed petition must be submitted to the executive committee (directly to the Governing Board chair or via scix@scixconference.org) by January 30 each year, in order to be considered and presented at that year's SciX conference. 
• A Distinguished Service Award will be awarded to the candidate if the Governing Board approves the petition by a majority vote.

Past Recipients

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