SciX 2023: A Look at the Tuesday Afternoon Oral Session Focusing on 50 Years in Mass Spectrometry
From 3:50–5:30 pm, an oral session titled “50 Years in Mass Spectrometry” will be taking place in Southern Pacific A/G. This series of six talks will discuss a variety of spectroscopic techniques being used in forensic analysis.
At 3:50 pm, Benjamin Garcia of the Washington University School of Medicine will kick off the session with a talk titled, “Development of new tools for RNA modification analysis by MS.” This talk will present two chemical derivatization approaches to improve the retention of RNA mononucleosides on C18 based columns and enhance quantification, as well as data independent acquisition methodology that can quantify over 70 RNA modification types.
Following this, at 4:10 pm, Carlito Lebrilla of the University of California, Davis, will give a talk titled, “The Glycomics of Food.” Lebrilla’s talk will provide an inside look at the analytical challenges facing food analysis, and touch upon how monosaccharide and linkage analyses have helped create a comprehensive database of food carbohydrates.
Next, at 4:30 pm, Boone Prentice of the University of Florida will give a talk titled, “Unraveling the Spatial Lipidome Using Gas-phase Ion/Ion Reactions.” This talk will discuss novel imaging technologies, such as high-resolution accurate mass (HRAM) measurements, collision induced dissociation (CID), and ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IM-MS), and how they can be used to provide high levels of chemical resolution.
Finally, at 4:50 pm, the session will conclude with a talk that will be led by Hilkka Kenttamaa of Purdue University. The talk, titled, “Functional Group-selective Ion-molecule Reactions in Structural Characterization of Drug Metabolites and Degradation Products by Tandem Mass Spectrometry,” will discuss automation of diagnostic ion-molecule reaction experiments, and several examples are brought up.
The Role of LIBS in ChemCam and SuperCam: An Interview with Kelsey Williams, Part III
May 2nd 2025In this extended Q&A interview, we sit down with Kelsey Williams, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), who is working on planetary instrumentation using spectroscopic techniques such as laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and laser ablation molecular isotopic spectrometry (LAMIS). In Part III, Williams goes into detail about ChemCam and SuperCam and how LIBS is used in both these instruments.
High-Speed Laser MS for Precise, Prep-Free Environmental Particle Tracking
April 21st 2025Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated that a fast, laser-based mass spectrometry method—LA-ICP-TOF-MS—can accurately detect and identify airborne environmental particles, including toxic metal particles like ruthenium, without the need for complex sample preparation. The work offers a breakthrough in rapid, high-resolution analysis of environmental pollutants.
