This topical collection features young investigators by highlighting their recent research activities in separation science. We are grateful for the overwhelming feedback we have received and thank all contributors for generously providing excellent research articles and critical reviews from the forefront of their research. Below, we invite you to meet those who contributed to this exceptional paper collection.

Deirdre Cabooter completed a Master of Science in Bioengineering at the Free University of Brussels in 2005, after which she obtained a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the same university in 2009. The main topic of her Ph.D. was the comparison and evaluation of novel techniques in the field of liquid chromatography. After her Ph.D., she obtained a post-doctoral fellowship from the Research Foundation Flanders (2009–2011) of which she spent one year at Stellenbosch University (South Africa) where her research was primarily focused on the analysis of natural products. In October 2011, she obtained a research professor position (tenure-track) at the University of Leuven at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. She was appointed associate professor at the same faculty in October 2016. Her current research is directed towards a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of chromatography, the evaluation of novel supports in chromatography, the analysis of complex samples in diverse fields of application, retention modeling and solutions for automated method development. She has published 61 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and is currently (co-)promoter of 7 Ph.D. students. In 2016, she appeared in the Top 50 most influential women in analytical sciences of the Analytical Scientist. She is also the recipient of the 2017 LCGC Emerging Leader in Chromatography Award.

Dr. Michelle Camenzuli is an assistant professor within the Biomolecular Systems Analytics group at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her research is focused on developing new chromatographic column technology for proteomics, particularly for the enrichment of phosphorylated proteins. Prior to moving into the field of proteomics, Dr. Camenzuli held a 1-year post-doctoral position in 2013 focused on orthogonality in two-dimensional liquid chromatography with Prof. Peter Schoenmakers at the University of Amsterdam. During this position, she developed a new metric for orthogonality known as the asterisk equations. These equations have been cited numerous times and form part of the PIOTR LCxLC optimization program developed within the group of Prof. Schoenmakers. Dr. Camenzuli was awarded a Ph.D. in 2013 for her work developing active flow technology with Prof. R. Andrew Shalliker at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. She also spent time in industry working at Dyesol Australia Ltd. as their analytical chemist. Currently, she has published 20 papers in peer-reviewed journals with 317 citations, 1 patent and a H index of 12.

Alessia Ciogli obtained her Ph.D. from the Sapienza University of Rome in 2006, with a thesis concerning the synthesis of stationary phases for enantiomeric separations under the supervision of Prof. Gasparrini. After that, she was involved in the Gasparrini group in the synthesis of new supports for chromatographic applications, the study of stereolability of chiral molecules and in the development of advanced methodologies for the separation of enantiomers and/or bioactive molecules. She spent 6 months in 2008 in the group of Prof. Lindner at the University of Wien and, since 2010, she became Assistant Professor in Sapienza University of Rome. Her interests lie in organic chemistry, stereochemistry, chemistry of materials and separation science.

Sebastiaan Eeltink received his Ph.D. degree in chemistry (specialization Analytical Chemistry) in 2005 from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, for his dissertation “Packed and monolithic capillary columns for LC”. From 2005 to 2007, he conducted post-doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and was a guest scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Afterwards, he joined Dionex (currently Thermo Fisher Scientific) to conduct research on packed and monolith column technology for ultrahigh-pressure LC, two-dimensional LC, and nanoLC. In 2009, the National Fund for Scientific Research (FWO, Belgium) awarded him an Odysseus grant, and currently he holds a position as research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

His team is working on the development and characterization of novel column structures, including monolithic nanomaterials, the development of microfluidic chip technology, including chip modulation in LCxLC and chip devices for spatial 3D-LC, and the application of novel technology and approaches to advance (2D-)LC–MS analysis of contemporary biopharmaceutical and life-science mixtures. He is (co-)author of more than 80 peer-reviewed publications on chromatography in international scientific journals and 3 patent applications on spatial three-dimensional liquid chromatography. He recently joined the Editorial Advisory Board of Chromatographia.

Till Gruendling is an analytical chemist and laboratory team leader at the Competence Center Analytics at BASF SE. Currently, his main interests lie in the field of analytical problem solving in industrial chemistry, with a focus on polymer structure elucidation and untangling the composition of complex formulations and functional polymers. In this task, he employs various spectrometric and chromatographic techniques, including MALDI-ToF, HPLC/MS, and Pyrolysis-GC/MS in combination with advanced sample preparation protocols. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of New South Wales under the supervision of Christopher Barner-Kowollik, Michael Guilhaus and Brynn Hibbert. He has published 18 peer-reviewed research papers and has presented his work at several international conferences.

Imad Haidar Ahmad is a principal scientist at the technical research and development department at Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation in San Carlos, CA, USA. He earned his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Florida State University under Professor André Striegel’s supervision. His graduate work focused on studying structure–property relationships in polymers using multi-detection size-exclusion chromatography. Thereafter, he moved to the University of Minnesota where he carried out his post-doctoral studies with Professor Peter Carr. In his postdoctoral work, he focused on learning the fundamental of separation science and two-dimensional liquid chromatography (2DLC). His current work is focused on analytical method development for complex separation, investigating analytical method problems using multidetection-2DLC, and analytical method validation.

Stefan Lamotte is senior scientist for liquid chromatography at the Competence Center Analytics at BASF SE. His focus is method development and validation for liquid chromatography and the implementation of new liquid chromatographic techniques in an industrial environment. He received his Ph.D. at Saarland University in Saarbruecken in 1998 under the supervision of Heinz Engelhardt. After 13 years as division manager of columns and stationary phases at Bischoff Chromatography, he joined BASF SE in 2011. Stefan Lamotte gives lectures and courses in HPLC, he is co-author of several books on chromatography and has presented his work at several international conferences.

Eva Tyteca has a Master’s degree in bio-engineering sciences and obtained her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium. She spent part of her post-doctoral research at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, investigating the possibilities of chromatographic retention prediction using chemical structures. Currently, she is Analytical Chemistry professor at the Faculty of Agronomy, Bio-engineering and Chemistry of the University of Liège in Gembloux, Belgium. Her research focuses on the (computer-assisted) development of chromatographic methods for pharmaceutical, environmental and agricultural applications. Recently, she has been nominated for the Young Scientist Award at the 27th Symposium on Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis (PBA 2016, Guangzhou, China).

Elena Uliyanchenko obtained her M.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering from Volgograd State Technical University, Russia (2007) and her Ph.D. degree in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2012). Her Ph.D. work focused on applications of ultra-high-pressure (size-exclusion) liquid chromatography and two-dimensional liquid chromatography for the analysis of synthetic polymers. For her contributions in this field, she has a number of awards including the bi-annual Kolthoff Award for the best thesis in Analytical Chemistry in the Netherlands, and a Young Scientist Award during the sixth International Symposium on the Separation and Characterization of Macromolecules.

Currently, she holds a position of a Senior Scientist at the Analytical Technology department at SABIC, The Netherlands. In this role, she is leading a chromatography team that focuses on applications of advanced chromatography and mass-spectrometry techniques for the analysis of various synthetic polymers. Her research interests cover ultra-high-pressure LC, two-dimensional LC, high-resolution LC–MS and MALDI–TOF MS, as well as hyphenated LC techniques.