UCD Mass Spectrometry Community of Practice #WST2019
By Dr Jimmy Muldoon, School of Chemistry
On March 13th recently formed UCD Mass Spectrometry Community of Practice held a pre-event seminar as part of UCD’s Work Smarter Together event. The Mass Spec Cop comprises members from UCD Schools of Chemistry, Agriculture and Food Science, Earth Science, Biology and Environmental Science (amongst others), and our March 13 event was also attended by a number of manufacturers and instrumentation vendors, including Agilent, Perkin Elmer, Thermo Fisher and Waters, consumables suppliers Apex Scientific.
During a two hour session in the Blue Room in the Student Centre, Mass Spectrometry lab managers in UCD gave short presentations describing the instrumentation available within their facilities and the range of techniques available. This provided a rare opportunity for local practitioners of the discipline to compare for example, the setup required for high throughput protein analysis with that of a lab undertaking inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry analysis of geological samples – and many other scenarios.
As is always the case when enthusiasts of any science meet, lively discussions ensued and much positive feedback was gathered from users, lab managers and vendors regarding the opportunities available within UCD for collaborations and future research. Gathering together the actual hands-on users of the instrumentation lent an extra dimension to the discussions and provided depth to the exploration of current analytical capabilities and of new research opportunities grounded in cross-school collaboration. Vendors provided useful awareness of the latest state-of-the-art instrumentation and future opportunities in the MS and ancillary equipment space. A recurring theme was the need for sustainable long-term investment in equipment, servicing support and training to achieve the utmost from such advanced techniques and instrumentation.
The Mass Spec CoP shall continue to arrange networking and training events during the year following the success of this event, as garnered from the overwhelmingly positive feedback received from attendees. The expectation is that future events shall include training and vendor presentations. We also hope to leverage in-house expertise to provide training and education presentations arising from within the diverse range of disciplines employed in the UCD Mass Spectrometry Community of Practice. This meeting successfully demonstrated that UCD not only has extensive instrumentation for Mass Spectrometry, but an impressive bank of practitioners and expertise within the field.
Dr Jimmy Muldoon
Senior Technical Officer, School of Chemistry
Member of the UCD Mass Spectrometry Community of Practice
