Not going to lie, I was a little apprehensive walking into this talk. Chemistry is a bit far in my mind and last I heard of chromatography was in an organic chemistry class a few years back. All that to say, I was wondering if I would understand anything during the colloquium. Dr. Krogh however, made his presentation very accessible. He minimized jargon throughout and he even managed to explain chromatography without using chemistry which I thought was pretty neat. The structure of his presentation also made his subject easier to understand as well. He started broadly by doing a little evolution of mass spectrometry and putting spectrometry into context before jumping into his own research which made his presentation much easier to follow.

His presentation gave me an idea of how mass spectrometry fits into an environmental context. Over the years, people managed to take mass spectrometry out of the lab and into the field. The advantage with this “portable” spectrometry apparatus is that you can get data in real time, have more coverage and have less contamination from shipping your samples to a lab (although you do have to deal a lot more with calibration, overheating and breaking incidents). You can also simultaneously measure other elements or factors such as wind or even superimpose your data directly on a map as you go along sampling from the van. It was interesting to know that now they can also use this technique to identify sources of pollution. Over the years, they managed to associate a pattern on a spectrum to a specific source and can even paint the portrait of pollution in cities where they can see which neighborhoods are more polluted and by what.

In terms of methods, there is not much overlap between my research on bird behaviour and Dr. Krogh’s mass spectrometry. I do have to say that I was impressed at how much sensitive equipment they managed to fit in the back of a moving van and still have everything working and remaining relatively accurate.

In terms of the question period, I think he answered everyone well and clearly. I thought it was interesting that he prepared some questions himself. Hands did seem a little shy at first, so perhaps it was a good strategy on his part. If I had to ask a question, I would have asked if he works with any of the cities and towns he drives through and if any are interested in his data. He also briefly mention calibration of the mass spectrometer and I would have liked him to go in a bit more detail about it and how it differs from a lab setting.