Preparing for a Transition to Analytical Chemistry

Ayush Agarwal is a postdoctoral researcher at the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) in Berlin. He previously completed his PhD in Energy at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, where his work focused on analytical method development.^1,2

In this clip in our “Pathways in Spectroscopy” series with Agarwal, he advises engineers on what can help them make a smooth transition to analytical chemistry.

Spectroscopy: Would you be able to offer advice to engineers who might want to transition to analytical chemistry? How should they prepare for such a transition?

Ayush Agarwal: The thing that helped me the most was curiosity because even when I was working as an engineer, the quality control (QC) department was just a black box. As an engineer, my job was just to ensure that production was running well. I do all the heat and mass balance and make sure that the productivity is there 24/7, and that's where my job ended. The samples were then sent to QC, and it was seen by me more as a regulatory compliance requirement, rather than something that really helped me do my job better.

When you are in industry, depending on the requirement of the companies, you may or may not be encouraged to learn the skills of QC. And that's where I was curious: what are these people doing, and why are they doing this? And so, my advice to engineers who want to transition to analytical chemistry is to be curious because QC is something that really makes or breaks it for you. No matter how good of an engineer you are, if the QC fails, your product is not going to make it to the market. If there is an accident or a disaster because of your product, it is the QC that helps us investigate what went wrong and how can we prevent it. In cases, it can also help us bring or recall all the product from that particular match if the issue is serious. So learning QC or analytical chemistry, in my eyes, can help one become a better engineer, so whether you want to go full-time into the analytical side of things, or just want to do your job better, I think curiosity is something that can really help you do your job better. After all, we cannot improve something we cannot measure.

References

1. Wetzel, W. Pathways in Spectroscopy Preview: Transitioning from Chemical Engineering to Analytical Chemistry. Spectroscopy. Available at: https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/pathways-in-spectroscopy-preview-transitioning-from-chemical-engineering-to-analytical-chemistry (accessed 2026-04-16).
2. LinkedIn, Ayush Agarwal. LinkedIn. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayush09/ (accessed 2026-04-16).