Dr. Erik Krogh, co-director of Applied Environmental Research Laboratories (AERL) at Vancouver Island University gave a wonderful presentation on “Advances in Direct Mass Spectrometry for mobilized Environmental Chemical Analysis” on October 26, 2018. It was great to attend the seminar. I came to know that now mass spectrometer is portable. Dr. Krogh and his team have done a tremendous job. They have put the spectrometer in a van and by this way, they are taking lab to the sample instead of taking the samples into the lab. It is a great news in the field environmental analysis. Taking the samples into the lab it takes much time and for this reason sometimes we could not get proper result because of sample contamination or analyte loss while analyzing the samples in the lab. But now the lab is being taken to the samples which is very helpful to get accurate results within very short time. So now we can get rapid response and adaptive sampling.

Dr. Krogh is a very passionate researcher as well as a wonderful person. At the start of this session I got a chance to talk to him personally. He is a very nice person, he asked about my program of study and research project. At first of his lecture he grew interest among the audiences and get full attention from them. I was really excited to enjoy his presentation. He explained what Mass spectrometry is, how it works. He told us about direct sampling methods, screening and membrane transport. He showed us how the air pollution is affecting us every moment. Then he explained both the primary and secondary air pollutants and their sources and how they are being sampled and monitored.

My research is very much related to Dr. Krogh’s work. I am going to work on analysis physical and chemical properties, characterization and modification of clay minerals to use them effectively in environmental pollution remediation processes. I am going to use mass spectrometer for the analysis of my sample. So definitely, Dr. Krogh’s presentation made me more enthusiastic towards my research and it is going to help me a lot. I got so many information from his sampling and analysis methods which will help me in my future for sure.

Dr. Krogh answered all the questions very well. In fact, he also put some questions in his slide so that his audience could get idea what should be the information that they should know. This proved that how much enthusiastic he is to be asked question and how happy to give answer to the listeners. Someone asked him what chromatography is. He explained the answer so well with real life example. In a word, I would say, I enjoyed each and every part of this seminar.  It would be really great if I could talk to him for some more time and could get some more information about his research.