ECAC (AKKI) on the Cooperation festival “Right time, right place” (“Õigel ajal õiges kohas”)

Analuutilise_Keemia_Kvaliteedi_Infrastruktuur_ENGOn Oct 14, 2015 Tallinn University of Technology and University of Tartu jointly organized the first cooperation festival “Right time, right place” (“Õigel ajal õiges kohas”), venue: Mektory innovation centre, Tallinn).

The festival aimed first of all at intensifying collaboration between Estonian industry and academia, but also between different research teams of the two universities. The interest in the event was so large that at some point pre-registration was stopped because of too many participants. The participant number who eventually participated in the event reached 430.

The analytical chemistry research group of UT was also present at the festival and promoted the ECAC distributed interdisciplinary research infrastructure. ECAC unites the competence and analytical capabilities of three prominent organizations in Estonia: University of Tartu, Tallinn University of Technology and the Estonian Environmental Research Centre and offers access to analytical instruments as well as services and collaboration both to academia and industry. Ivo Leito made a presentation about the analytical possibilities of ECAC that can be of interest to the Industry: Analüütilise Keemia Kvaliteedi Infrastruktuur (AKKI) (in Estonian).

Signe Vahur with ATR-FT-IR Instrument at Cooperation Festival Oct 2015
Signe Vahur with ATR-FT-IR Instrument at Cooperation Festival Oct 2015

In addition, we demonstrated our FT-IR analysis capability and had a fully operational ATR-FT-IR instrument with us (image on the right), enabling any interested person to run material analysis of either the samples that we brought with us or almost anything that could be found on site. People were very interested in the analysis of wood coatings, different polymers and also of their own clothes (e.g. for determining whether a necktie is made of silk or polyester) and research fellow Signe Vahur – our main FT-IR expert – was busy all the day to record and interpret spectra and give explanations to interested people.

This possibility of instant ATR-FT-IR analysis proved to be the most popular topic in the Chemistry thematic room of the festival and attracted much attention from people with very different backgrounds. This is not surprising – this instrumental method has been in the core of a number of research collaboration projects with industry in the past and is expected to be so also in the future.

EACH and AMS students strongly benefit from the expertise and instrumentation that has been accumulated by ECAC (AKKI). Several of the EACH/AMS teachers are directly involved in ECAC and a number of ECAC’s instruments are used in teaching and thesis work.

 

Using MOOCs for teaching analytical chemistry: experience at University of Tartu at the Euroanalysis 2015

Leito_Measurement_Uncertainty_MOOC_Euroanalysis_2015On Sept 07, 2015 Ivo Leito gave a presentation Using MOOCs for teaching analytical chemistry: experience at University of Tartu at the Euroanalysis XVIII (Bordeaux, France).

The presentation outlined the contents and organisation of the material in the on-line course Estimation of measurement uncertainty in chemical analysis, the ways of using it (for independent learning, for self-testing, as an information source and as a basis for running as a MOOC) and the experience of running it as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) at University of Tartu in spring 2014 and 2015. Part of the presentation was devoted to analyzing the pros and cons of MOOCs as a way of teaching and in particular as a way of teaching analytical chemistry (or its subdisciplines). It was concluded that MOOCs do have advantages, especially if compared to short training courses for practitioners. The talk created quite some interest and discussions after the session.

Detailed discussion of this topic has been published: I. Leito, I. Helm, L. Jalukse. Anal Bioanal Chem 2015, 407, 1277–1281.
The course material is available from https://sisu.ut.ee/measurement/

 

Introductory meeting of EACH Students 2015

EACH_Student_Introductory_Meeting_2015Today (Aug 31, 2015) the introductory meeting of the EACH Erasmus Mundus students with the programme coordinators took place at UT Chemicum.

All the 18 students (originating from Ukraine, China, India, Jordan, Congo, Nepal, Nigeria, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, USA and Estonia), who start their studies in EACH in this autumn were participating. An overview of the programme was given (the slides are available from here) and a large number of questions were asked and answered, accompanied by tea/coffee and cake.

This is the first group of students who start their studies in the EACH Erasmus Mundus programme, so, exciting months are ahead, both for students and programme teachers/coordinators!

Photo: EACH Students and their Tutor Kaisa Tihkan (on the right).

 

MSC Euromaster Summer school 2015: Feedback from students

UT_Students_at_MSC_Euromaster_Summer_School_2015The MSC Euromaster Summer School 2015 in Pulawy (Jul 12-24, 2015) was again a success and the student feedback were very positive. Two reflections from AMS students are presented here:

Sagar Patel: I will remember my time spent in summer school held at Pulawy (Poland) for a lifetime. It was amazing and I don’t have words to express my feelings. I got very useful and practical knowledge of Metrology in Chemistry, statistics, interactions with customers, ISO 17025 and many more. Apart from studies I got a chance to work with students and professionals from different countries.

Karl Kütt: The MSC Summer school on metrology in chemistry has been a great addition to my studies. It combines the theoretical knowledge that I have learned in my program with the teamwork skills and real-world problem-solving skills that one encounters when running a real laboratory or a project. The course had extensive lessons on both uncertainties in chemistry and validation (a key aspect in the ISO 17025 standard). The neat thing about the summer school is that in its practical exercises you’re not presented with a wrong or a right way, but a situation in which every decision has its pros and cons. I think going to the summer school greatly improved my skills in working in a group, solving complicated problems as well as helped me make important contacts and great friends in the field of metrology.

Image on the left: UT students who participated in the MSC Summer School 2015, from left to right: Sagar Patel (India), Sylvestre Pagkeu (Cameroon), Martins Jansons (Latvia), Karl Kütt (Estonia)

MSC Euromaster Summer school 2015 in Puławy

Group_Photo_MSC_SS_2015This week saw the start (on Mon, Jul 13, 2015) of the 8th MSC Euromaster summer school 2015 in Puławy (Poland).

As in previous years, a core aim of the Summer school is shifting the activities away from the classical lecture-type of teaching by increasing the share of discussions, hands-on work, teamwork. As usual, a key activity of the summer school is the contest of student teams (setting up virtual laboratories and interacting with customers), which tests their knowledge and skills in all areas of metrology in chemistry.

This year the summer school makes further advances in terms of this “core shift”. One of the modules, which was carried out differently, was measurement uncertainty, which was the the main responsibility of UT during the summer school. Instead of the classical way – starting with lecture and then moving to discussion – the students were well in advance of the Summer school asked to learn the basic (and quite some not so basic) topics of measurement uncertainty using the web course Estimation of Measurement Uncertainty in Chemical Analysis. This way the lecturing part was omitted completely from the Summer school, as students had the necessary preparation. Thus, the whole measurement uncertainty module at the Summer school consisted of a big session of discussions and problem solving.

Another module, where hands-on work was very important was the Internal and external quality control module (delivered mainly by Ricardo Da Silva from University of Lisbon). He organised an “interlaboratory comparison” between students (in visual photometry) as a part of the session! Students were very excited to see how their results compared to their colleagues’ results.

The summer school still has one week to go and will finish on Fri, Jul 24, 2015.

 

Tutorial Review on LC-MS Method Validation

Graphical_AbstractThe LC-MS group at the UT Institute of Chemistry were recently invited by the journal Analytica Chimica Acta to write a tutorial review on the topic of validation of liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) methods. This work has now been completed. The tutorial review intends to give an overview of the state of the art of method validation in liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC–MS), especially with electrospray ionisation (LC-ESI-MS), and discuss specific issues that arise with MS (and MS-MS) detection (i.e. LC-MS-MS) in LC (as opposed to the “conventional” detectors). The review was eventually split in two parts (because of its large volume):

(as an April joke from Elsevier, part II appears page-wise before part I)

The review addresses and compares all the major validation guidelines published by international organizations: ICH, IUPAC, AOAC, FDA, EMA (EMEA), Eurachem, SANCO, NordVal, European Commission Decision 2002/657/EC. With every performance characteristic the tutorial review briefly compares the recommendations of the guidelines.

The Part I briefly introduces the principles of operation of LC–MS (emphasizing the aspects important from the validation point of view, in particular the ionization process and ionization suppression/enhancement); reviews the main validation guideline documents and discusses in detail the following performance parameters: selectivity/specificity/identity, ruggedness/robustness, limit of detection, limit of quantification, decision limit and detection capability. The Part II starts with briefly introducing the main quantitation methods and then addresses the performance related to quantification: linearity of signal, sensitivity, precision, trueness, accuracy, stability and measurement uncertainty. The last section of Part II is devoted to practical considerations in validation and a possible step by step validation plan specifically suitable for LC-MS-MS is presented.

With every method performance characteristic its essence and terminology are addressed, the current status of treating it is reviewed and recommendations are given, how to determine it, specifically in the case of LC–MS methods. In many cases the published guidelines remain too general for practicing analyst. This tutorial review gives more specific advice based on the best available practice.

Based on the recommended approaches presented in this tutorial review an LC-MS validation software ValChrom is currently under development by the UT team. The software development is supported by the EU Regional Development Fund (Development of software for validation of chromatographic methods, Project No. 3.2.1201.13-0020).