The Strength of the Spectroscopy Community

At the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry in Tucson, Arizona, Spiros Pergantis, an analytical chemist and Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Crete, delivered a talk titled, “ICP-MS as a Sensitive Carbon Detector for Nanoplastics and Organic Molecules” (1).

Pergantis has served on the faculty since 2003 and as a full professor since 2014. He received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Ioannina (1988) and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of British Columbia (1994), working under the supervision of William R. Cullen. His early training and research were strongly grounded in mass spectrometry (MS) and elemental speciation (2).

Pergantis has held academic and research appointments in Greece, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States. Prior to joining the University of Crete, he was a Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, and a postdoctoral fellow at Utrecht University, the Free University of Amsterdam, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (2). He later returned to the EPA as a National Research Council Resident Senior Research Associate during a sabbatical in 2010–2011 (2).

His research focuses on analytical mass spectrometry, particularly elemental and molecular speciation, metallomics, nanoparticle analysis, and the development of hyphenated techniques combining separation science with atomic and molecular mass spectrometry. He has made sustained contributions to arsenic, selenium, and antimony speciation in environmental, biological, and food systems, as well as to emerging methodologies for characterizing metal-containing nanoparticles.

Pergantis has served as principal investigator on numerous competitive research grants funded by the European Commission, Greek ministries, UK research councils, and the U.S. National Research Council. He has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, a book chapter on electrospray ionization for trace element speciation, and a U.S. EPA technical report.

In this video segment, Pergantis offers his reactions about the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry and discusses the strength of the spectroscopy community.

This video clip is the first part of our conversation with Pergantis. To stay up to date on our coverage of the Winter Conference, click here.

References

1. IASA, Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry. IASA. Available at: https://iasa.world/winter-plasma-conference (accessed 2026-01-13).
2. University of Crete, Spiros Pergantis. University of Crete. Available at: https://www.chemistry.uoc.gr/wordpress/en/pergantis-spiros/ (accessed 2026-01-13).