Topic: Science

My Short Term Scientific Mission (STSM) was held for two weeks on the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland. I was working in the Mass spectrometric imaging group of Markus Stoeckli; my practical supervisors were Dieter Staab and Gregory Morandi. I visited the campus for two main reasons; I wanted to learn the quantification in mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) and I wanted to explore research lab in a pharmaceutical company.

I am again on my way. This time on the boarder of France and Switzerland. I will spend two weeks in the research lab of Markus Stoeckli in Novartis. The stay has been planned since the conference in Spain and after couple of months the right time for another travelling came. I will be working in Switzerland but thank to my mum’s cousin, I am staying in his flat across the boarders in St. Louis, France.

Recently I reported about COST supported course on the basics of Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MSI) that took place in Amsterdam at FOM-Institute AMOLF. At the end of October was organized a course for intermediate users of MSI in Bio Medical Center (BMC) of Lund University in Sweden. I took part together with two colleagues of mine from AMOLF and here I bring a summarizing report on the course. 

"COST is an intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology, allowing the coordination of nationally-funded research on a European level." "COST enables break-through scientific developments leading to new concepts and products and thereby contributes to strengthen Europe’s research and innovation capacities." These are words form the official website www.cost.eu.

I will spend the following six months in the FOM-Institute AMOLF. I learned about the institute thanks to a friend of mine, who recommended it to me together with couple of more places within Europe as an ideal place for doing a mass spectrometry related internship. I went through the information on the website and subsequently decided to e-mail to professor Ron Heeren and ask him about the possibilities of an internship in his group. I had no idea it would be so easy, actually.

The International Mass Spectrometry Conference (IMSC) has been organized once in three years since 1958. Last IMSC in 2009 took place in Bremen, Germany. 2012 was a special year for IMSC, as is was localized out of Europe for the first time: in Kyoto, Japan. The opening ceremony on Sunday 16th September was followed by four and a half day of exquisite mass spectrometric programme.

The first international conference on Mass Spectrometry Imaging took place in Ourense (one of four regions of Galicia, Spain) between 3rd and 5th September and was named OurCon 2012. I took part mostly for the reason to learn about Mass Spectrometry Imaging, as this will be the core technique during my upcoming stay at FOM-Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam.

During four days at the turn of April (29th Apr - 2nd May 2012) the 30th Informal Meeting on Mass Spectrometry took place in Olomouc. The organizing university for this year was the Palacky's University in Olomouc (Czech Republic).

Different scientifical conferences or forums are great opportunties, how to present reached results of ones's research. They are organized throughout the whole year, their main season, however, is from April to September. Each conference is typically aimed at a particular scientifical topic and therefore a community. Mostly an active participation is demanded.

The Thursday's work in lab was so gorgeous and just according to the plan that I could have been in a strong suspicion something would go wrong on Friday eventually. The betrayal of the intrument came in the form of the afternoon spent with the ion optics cleaning.