Knowledge Exchange – Advancing Food Security with Sensors and Analytical Instrumentation

Dr Simon Maher (EEE) with Dr Iain Young (IIB) and Prof Joe Spencer (EEE) in Thailand last week as part of an Institutional Links Award with Chulalongkorn University where they delivered a workshop Advancing Food Security with Sensors and Analytical Instrumentation to staff and students from Chulalongkorn University and representatives from leading Thai biotechnology and food companies. They also provided their partners on the Award, Dr Thanit Praneenararat and Prof. Tirayut Vilaivan, a prototype bespoke portable Ion Mobility Spectrometer to test for antibiotics in food utilizing technologies developed jointly with the partners. While in Thailand, the group met with several companies in the global food industry including senior managers from the CP Group (seen in the picture), a global conglomerate with revenues > $45 billion USD. The plan is to expand the utility of the devices for the food and biotechnology sector and to expand its capability to include detection and quantification of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, food-borne pathogens and other contaminants.

 

Range High School Students annual visit to NMR Centre

On Friday 9th March 15 chemistry A-Level students from Range High School visited the Institute for a workshop in the NMR Centre for Structural Biology organised by Dr Jill Madine and Dr Marie Phelan. This visit has been an annual event for the past several years which the students look forward to in order to gain enhanced understanding of NMR to help with their A-level courses and also gain an insight into what goes on in an academic research environment.  The students were given lectures on the basic applications of mass spectrometry and NMR from Stephen Moss (School of Physical Sciences) and Dr Marie Phelan. This was the followed by practical workshops where the students carried out chromatography and learnt to prepare and run NMR samples along with how to interpret the data.  Prior to their visit, as part of a school practical, they have made salicylic acid – a precursor for aspirin. We obtained these samples and collected NMR spectra of their products ready for analysis on the day.  This enabled them to establish how successful their synthesis had been and compare their results across the class, with previous years’ students (and to the teacher!). This final part of the day is always the most exciting for the students where there is no hiding that they actually dropped their sample and scraped it off the desk!

PhD student James Torpey along with internship students Daniel Thomas and Raven Chandramohan  helped with the day providing practical and theoretical advice.