Application of Microextraction Technologies to Food Determinations

Description:
Screening of contaminants present in food and origin of food is an important task. New developments in high throughput determinations have been demonstrated not only with GC/MS and LC/MS, but direct couplings to MS. These are critical advances which will impact effectiveness of public protection.

Speaker: Janusz Pawliszyn - University of Waterloo
The primary focus of Professor Pawliszyn's research program is the design of highly automated and integrated instrumentation for the isolation of analytes from complex matrices and the subsequent separation, identification and determination of these species. The primary separation tools used by his group are Gas Chromatography, Liquid Chromatography and Capillary Electrophoresis coupled to variety of detections systems, including range of mass spectrometry techniques as well as ambient ionization techniques. Currently his research is focusing on elimination of organic solvents from the sample preparation step and miniaturization of the sampling devices to facilitate on-site monitoring and in-vivo analysis. Several alternative techniques to solvent extraction are investigated including use of coated fibers, packed needles, membranes and supercritical fluids.