This Special issue on “Advances in Capillary Chromatography” is related to the “44th International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography and 17th GCxGC Symposium”, renowned worldwide as “Riva2020” Conference, that was set to take place in Riva del Garda, Italy, May 24–29, 2020.
The conference represents the premier meeting discussing the most recent developments in Capillary Chromatography, with special emphasis on all comprehensive separation technologies and MS hyphenation. Every two years, around 800 people gathered by the enchanting shores of Lake of Garda to join an outstanding lecture programme, one of the largest instrument exhibition, and attractive social events offering opportunities to meet with colleagues and world-renown scientists.
Unfortunately, due to the ongoing situation with regard to the COVID-19 outbreak, and after careful evaluation of all the possible scenarios and the unforeseeable developments, the Chairman of “RIVA” prof. Luigi Mondello, together with the Organizing Committee took the painful decision to cancel the Conference, despite the huge number of already registered participants, submitted contributions, confirmed sponsors and speakers. The health and safety of our conference speakers, attendees, and staff was put first in this proactive, preventative action.
Planning a RIVA Conference requires a considerable lead time for organizers, vendors, and delegates to make travel arrangements, book accommodation and organize meetings, seminars, exhibition, scientific and social program. Also the financial implications of a long-planned event getting cancelled are many. On the other hand, a short-term solution later in the same year was not a viable option, due to the unpredictable course of the pandemic (as we all have experienced).
However, we have been thinking about how we could present the numerous high-quality contributions that reached us, to the public after all, and decided to keep the Virtual Special Issue open, to provide such opportunity. This Special Issue of Journal of Chromatography A devoted to the RIVA2020 Conference includes 15 contributed peer-review papers, presenting the latest results in areas relevant to Liquid chromatography, Open tubular and Capillary chromatography, Comprehensive gas chromatography, Electromigration methods, Sampling and Sample preparation. Applications include foods and beverages, food residues and contaminants, genomics, metabolomics, biomedicals and biopharmaceuticals.
As editors of this Special Issue, we would like to thank all the authors for their excellent contributions, and also greatly acknowledge all the reviewers for the time and expertise spent on evaluating these manuscripts. Finally, we extend our appreciation to the editorial office staff who were very supportive and provided all the guidance needed for preparing this Special Issue.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors Paola Dugo and Paola Donato declare no conflict of interest/competing interests.