The winners of the 2006 Life Science Industry Awards were announced by The Scientist magazine, with the Life Science Executive Exchange and the Science Advisory Board
The event honored the best-in-class companies in the life sciences and was attended by more than 200 executives from across the industry.
Over 2400 scientists from around the world were independently surveyed by market research firm BioInformatics.
The thousands of participating scientists cast their votes for the companies that have made the greatest contributions to life science technology in the past year.
As a result, the awards recognize those suppliers voted best-in-class in each of the 12 product categories, and six communications and support categories.
Although more than 500 individual companies were nominated, only 23 achieved the status of finalist and from this group nine were named winners.
"The Scientist is proud to be able to recognize the contributions of these companies to the field of life science research," says editor and publisher Richard Gallagher.
"The equipment and services that they provide are an essential part of the life science community, and this year's winners should be proud of their achievements, especially because they were chosen by scientists who use their products on a day-to-day basis".
BioInformatics, a market research firm serving the life science industry, again supplied its expertise to this year's voting.
From a thorough assessment of the award categories to development of a questionnaire that measures satisfaction and loyalty in addition to asking for assessments of best-in-class suppliers, the methodology created by BioInformatics precisely identifies the best suppliers in the industry, it says.
"The approach we took to this year's voting reflects our experience in performing thousands of surveys on behalf of our clients," says Bill Kelly, president of BioInformatics.
"Our methodology gives credibility to the results and proves that the top three Finalists in each category truly are the industry's elite".
The scientists invited to nominate suppliers in each product category were drawn from the Science Advisory Board - the world's largest online panel of scientific consumers - and the readership of The Scientist.
BioInformatics ensured that the responses received accurately reflected the demographics of the overall market in terms of geographic region and segmentation.
The results were analysed not only by the frequency with which a company was nominated, but also in terms of a numerical score derived from the satisfaction and loyalty questions.
The combined value was then used to select the 23 finalists honoured at the Life Science Industry Awards in Washington, DC.
Product categories and winners are:.
Cell biology instrumentation: BD Biosciences.
Cell biology kits and reagents: Invitrogen.
Cell culture media, reagents and plasticware: Invitrogen.
Computer hardware: Dell.
Gene expression analysis Products: Invitrogen.
High throughput screening and analysis systems: Applied Biosystems.
Image analysis systems: Bio-Rad Laboratories.
Instrumentation for genomic analysis: Applied Biosystems.
Instrumentation for protein analysis: Bio-Rad Laboratories.
Nucleic acid purification products: Qiagen.
Protein separation products: Bio-Rad Laboratories.
RNAi products: Ambion.
Communication/support categories and winners are:.
Print catalogue: New England Biolabs.
Customer service: Invitrogen.
Technical support: Invitrogen.
Website: Invitrogen.
Sales representatives: Fisher Scientific.
Print advertisement: Invitrogen.
The Life Science Industry Awards are given to top life science suppliers for their outstanding and unparalleled performance.
They are hosted by The Scientist magazine with the support of the Life Science Executive Exchange and the Science Advisory Board.
