SAS ATOMIC STUDENT SECTION AWARD
RECOGNIZING OUTSTANDING STUDENT RESEARCH IN THE AREA OF ATOMIC SPECTROSCOPY
2023 Award Recipient – Catharina Erbacher
Catharina Erbacher is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Analytical Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Uwe Karst at the University of Münster, Germany. She also obtained her B.Sc. (2018) and M.Sc. (2020) at the University of Münster and was honored with a graduation award for her successful M.Sc. studies by the Analytical Chemistry Division of the German Chemical Society. During her Master’s program, she joined the group of Prof. Dr. Risto Kostiainen at the University of Helsinki for a research internship. There, she focused on targeted metabolomics and proteomics to investigate the combination of tyrosine oxidation and phosphorylation. For her Master’s thesis, she became a member of Prof. Karst’s group, focusing on the development of an IC-ICP-MS method for speciation analysis of brominated nucleosides. The focus of her Ph.D. lies on the investigation of metal-protein-interactions using a complementary setup, comprising LC-ESI-TIMS-MS and LC-ICP-MS.
2023 Award Recipient –Cristina Mendez-Lopez
Cristina Mendez-Lopez is a 4th year Ph.D. student working on Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) at the Spectroscopy, Lasers and Plasmas Research Group (GELP) led by Profs. Nerea Bordel and Jorge Pisonero at the University of Oviedo. My experience in LIBS dates back to my undergraduate years, when I pursued my B.Sc. Thesis (Physics, 2018) on the subject of the effects of nebulization on laser-induced plasmas under supervision of Prof. Nerea Bordel. Afterwards, the Research Group gave me the opportunity to carry out my M.Sc. Thesis (Analytical and Bioanalytical Sciences, 2019) on the development of a double-pulse LIBS experimental set-up, from scratch, with the newly acquired femtosecond and nanosecond lasers. My Ph.D. Thesis continues the research in both fields of LIBS, having developed a methodology for liquid sample analysis based on nebulization (patent pending) and currently working on the thorough characterization of double-pulse LIBS experimental parameters, with special focus on the spatio-temporal variables.
2023 Award Recipient –MADELEINE LOMAX-VOGT
Madeleine Lomax-Vogt is a PhD candidate in analytical chemistry at The Ohio State University Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Advised by Drs. John Olesik and Paolo Gabrielli at the Trace Element Research Laboratory, Madeleine’s research is focused on trace elemental analysis of atmospheric mineral particles by single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry in ancient and modern glacial ice. Madeleine also built a searchable and filterable database of elemental, doubly charged, and polyatomic ions that can cause spectral overlaps in ICP-MS. Prior to her work at OSU, Madeleine was an honors graduate from Alfred University (New York) where she studied chemistry and science policy.
2023 Award Recipient –DARIYA TUKHMETOVA
Dariya Tukhmetova received her BSc and MSc in Chemistry from the Al Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. After working a year in a pharmaceutical industry, her enthusiasm about Analytical Chemistry led to accomplish another MSc within the Erasmus Mundus program “Excellence in Analytical Chemistry” from the University of Tartu in Tartu, Estonia, and the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 in Lyon, France. Currently, she is doing a PhD at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing under the guidance of Dr. Björn Meermann in Berlin, Germany. Her research is focused on the method development for isotope analysis of biological samples with on-line CE/ICP-MS system and development of data processing strategies.