Pittcon Editors’ Awards honoured the best new products on show at the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, or Pittcon, for 20 years from 1996 having been established by Dr Gordon Wilkinson, managing editor of Analytical Instrument Industry Report (later Instrumenta). On 8 March 2015, the event returned to the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans and this was the last occasion when the awards were presented.
The independent awards, which represented the results of an informal poll of leading editors, had become an important feature of the worlds largest trade show for the laboratory equipment industry. Pittcon organisers and media center supported the scheme and provided details and photographs on the exhibitions Press and Media Information page. In 2016 the group of editors and journalists that formed the core of the judging panel reluctantly decided to discontinue the awards program citing gradually dwindling support from ever-busier media representatives.