I will be traveling most of the month of March, participating at symposiums, conferences and trade shows and I hope to see you at one or the other.

The first event is the The International Air Transport Association (IATA) World Cargo Symposium 2008, in Rome, Italy, March 3-6. My wife, Colleen, and I are headed over a few days early to enjoy a long weekend in the Eternal City prior to the Symposium. I will be chairing the one-day Pharmaceutical Track, the first the airlines' Live Animals & Perishables Board (LAPB) has ever devoted to our industry. You can view the agenda here.

The following week I will be in Bethesda, Maryland to present at the Parenteral Drug Association (PDA) Cold Chain Management Training Conference and Exhibition, March 13-14.

I will deliver a presentation on Friday, the 14th. "Where is the Evolution of Thermal Package Design Headed?: Combining Technologies to Optimize Package Performance."

This thirty case study explores how segments of the testing industry and academia are blending innovative and efficient applications of computer-aided design, finite element analysis, and proven mathematical models, to accurately predict thermal performance, accelerate the design process, reduce physical testing, and increase design confidence for insulated packaging systems.

The science-driven approach uses multiple technologies in concert, providing for a more elegant solution over a single application or current iterative methodology.

 It also provides for documented evidence for the Design Qualification (DQ) of insulated packaging systems recommended in PDA Technical Report No.39, Sec. 6.3).

In addition to the technical conference, my colleagues and co-instructors, Rafik Bishara and Tom Pringle, will conduct a 2 day Cold Chain Management Training Course, March 11-12, through the PDA Training & Research Institute. A pdf of the agenda here.

The final week in March you can find me at Interphex 2008 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, then its back to Europe to attend the IATA LAPB annual meeting in London, as a member of their Temperature Control Task Force. I'm sure the topic of label requirements for temperature sensitive medicinal freight will be a major topic of discussion.

I was asked by the editor of Contract Pharma Magazine if I would be willing to step outside my normal Advanced Degrees column for the Jan/Feb issue, and write a feature article."The Epicenter of Cold Chain Management - the Parenteral Drug Association Plays a Critical Role" re-caps many of the global activities surrounding the rapidly growing field of pharmaceutical cold chain management and how the PDA is either directly involved or casts its influence over these initiatives. You can link directly to the on-line version here.