Dr. Simon Bates is currently V.P. of Science and Technology at Rigaku Americas Corp., where he nurtures collaborative relationships between industry partners and academia in the discovery of new technologies and methodologies for the next generation analytical systems. His fascination with materials science and analytics has led Dr. Bates on an interesting career path. Having received his Ph.D. from the University of Hull for his neutron diffraction studies on the magnetic properties of rare earth materials, Dr. Bates completed his postdoctoral work at the University of Edinburgh where he first started to design and build specialized high resolution X-ray diffraction system for materials characterization. He continued working on X-ray analytical systems and software design throughout his career at Philips, Shimadzu (Kratos), Bede Scientific, and Rigaku. However, before joining Rigaku, Dr. Bates explored a different career direction and spent 17 years working in pharmaceutical contract research at SSCI and then Triclinic Labs., where he expanded his toolkit for materials analysis to embrace thermal methods and IR/Raman spectroscopy while experimenting in organic chemistry and molecular modeling. Dr. Bates has continued his relationship with academia, volunteering as an Adjunct Professor at Purdue University, University of Hawaii Hilo and more recently at the University of Long Island. Keynote Presentation: Novel analytical methods and insights into Amorphous Solid Dispersions