Daily archives: September 14, 2016

Maya is working towards her Ph.D. in Environmental Chemistry. She grew up in the small town of Vulcan, Alberta and completed her undergrad at the University of Alberta with a double major in Chemistry and Biology. After graduation, she began working for the Biogeochemical Analytical Service Laboratory at the University of Alberta, where she used flow injection analysis to quantify nitrogen and phosphorous content in fresh water. It was during this time that she developed a passion for studying and monitoring the environment. Maya is very excited to be a part of the Styler Group; she hopes her research will aid in solving environmental issues pertaining to our atmosphere. Maya is currently studying the interactions of dust aerosol with atmospheric pollutants.

Since Autumn 2016 I have been studying at the University of Alberta as a graduate student in the Analytical Chemistry division. This path began at the University of Leipzig in Germany. During my Bachelor studies, I developed my passion for Analytical Chemistry focussing on GC-EI-MS method development in metabolomic research.

With this in mind, I focussed on Analytical Chemistry in Master studies too and experienced an interesting relation to Environmental Chemistry. Consequently, I began my postgraduate studies for Toxicology and Environmental Protection at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leipzig during my Master studies.

I finished my Master thesis in Leipzig in the research group of Professor Dr. Detlev Belder focussing on method development of microfluidic Lab-On-a-Chip devices coupled to ESI-Mass Spectrometry in the year 2015. Shortly afterward I had the fantastic opportunity to become a part of the Competence Center Analytics of the BASF SE in Ludwigshafen for a unique research visit working on (2D)-HPLC-MS/MS method development.

Finally I finished my thesis for postgraduate studies in Toxicology in June 2016 at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology (Fraunhofer IZI) in Rostock (Germany) in cooperation with the hospital of the University of Rostock about an HPLC-ESI-MS method development for the quantitative analysis of an loop diuretic in human plasma & urine samples and uremic toxins in human plasma samples.

Now my research focusses on the investigation of dust–pollutant interactions in an atmospheric reaction chamber and designing an online GC-MS system for chamber experiments.