Focus on research for the summer

I have successfully completed my Winter term teaching. I taught two courses, the Atmosphere and Ocean Lab at McGill University and the Chromatography Lab at Bishop’s University. I also supervised an Honour’s student at Bishop’s University, who graduated at the beginning of June (Congratulations, Kaylee!).

Now it is time to focus on my research projects again. I continue collaborating on the Mycospec project, where I develop chemometric models from mid-infrared data in Matlab. With model development and validation complete for the current data sets — a bagged decision tree algorithm turned out to be the best choice, I provide support for software development, while waiting for new infrared data to come in.

I also started a new, exciting project, looking at air pollutant concentrations (especially ozone) in major Canadian cities in the last 10 years. After initial statistical analysis, I have started a modelling exercise using the CAABA/MECCA box model to better understand the mechanisms responsible for certain observed pollution scenarios. This is shaping up to be very interesting.

Chemistry Departmental Seminar Series at Bishop’s University

With the help of the other faculty members, I have initiated and administered the Chemistry Departmental Seminar Series at Bishop’s University during the last academic year. I have secured funding from the Speaker’s Committee for student lunches with the speaker prior to the seminar and to cover speaker’s expenses.

The seminar was primarily targeted at undergraduate students to provide them with information about current research, future employment and graduate studies. Speakers were faculty members, graduate students and professionals from various fields of chemistry in order to provide different perspectives about chemistry-related activities.

Here is the list of speakers. We started off with 15–20 students and faculty in the audience during the fall term and had an audience of 25–30 during the winter term. The seminar programme was put together with suggestions from students and faculty members. Faculty took turns hosting the speaker and student lunches.

Winter 2015

  • Éloic Colombo, CHUS, Medicinal Chemistry, New inhibitors of matriptase for treatment of influenza viruses
  • Kaylee Saunders, Bishop’s University, Department of Chemistry, Characterization and Comparison of Neat Alternative Fuels and their Corresponding Combustion Residues
  • Frederic-George Fontaine, Université Laval, Département de Chimie, Molecular Geopolitics
  • Ian Butler, McGill University, Department of Chemistry, An Overview of the Applications of Molecular Spectroscopy in Art Forensics: Infrared and Raman Spectroscopy

Fall 2014

  • Avik Ghoshdastidar, McGill University, Department of Chemsitry Pharmaceuticals, Pesticides, Mercury and First Year Students — Journeys of a Grad Student in Chemistry
  • Patrick Ayotte, Université de Sherbrooke, Département de Chimie, Life and death of a snowflake; Or how to read the global atmospheric archives in a carrot?
  • Daniel Fortin, Université de Sherbrooke, Département de Chimie, Understand the chemistry and physical properties with molecular and electronic structures. See inside the molecular world!

New article in press

An article that I co-authored (and edited; 500+ references!) is now published — find it on the ACS Chemical Reviews webpage:

P.A. Ariya, M. Amyot, A. Dastoor, D.A. Deeds, M. Subir, A. Feinberg, G. Kos, A. Poulain, A. Ryjkov, K. Semeniuk, K. Toyota, Mercury Physicochemical and Biogeochemical Transformation in the Atmosphere and at Atmospheric Interfaces: A Review, Chemical Reviews 115 (2015) 3760–3802, 10.1021/cr500667e

Characterization of Biodiesels and Vegetable Oils after Combustion using GC-MS

An Honour’s student that I supervise presented an excellent poster at this year’s Research Week at Bishop’s University: Characterization of Biodiesels and Vegetable Oils and their Corresponding Combustion Residues.

Here is the abstract

Biodiesel is one of the most common alternative fuels and is becoming more predominant on the market today. Due to the emergence of biodiesel forensic analysts should be more aware of biodiesel components and properties since it may be encountered more in arson crime scene samples. Biodiesels are vegetable oil or animal oil based diesel fuels. Vegetable oils themselves undergo burning, self-heating, and spontaneous ignition which means they too, albeit less often, are observed in fire debris samples. Vegetable oils and fuels derived from them are not effectively analyzed using regular fire debris analysis methods. A solvent extraction is more suitable than the typical passive headspace extraction that is used for ignitable liquids. The vegetable oils must also be derivatized in order to convert the fatty acids (FAs) found in the oils to the volatile fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) which are necessary for GC-MS analysis. This work will demonstrate and analyze the changes, if any, in the FAME components that are observed between neat and burned alternative fuel accelerants. Biodiesel blends and multiple household oils, such as soy and canola oils, will be used as the accelerants. The findings of this research will aid in further understanding and in recognition of biodiesels and vegetable oils in fire debris.

Download the poster (pdf, 2 MB): ksaunders-gkos_biodiesel2015

… and research for the summer

I was able to do quite a bit of research during last fall and winter term, despite my high teaching load, preparing/co-writing proposals for atmospheric chemistry studies.

My current work focuses on

  1. Methodology development and validation for formaldehyde in air
  2. Multivariate statistics model development (mostly PCA-based) for the discrimination of contaminated foodstuffs by FTIR-ATR spectroscopy. The work is part of the EU FP7 funded MYCOSPEC project.

Especially the second project has been most interesting and challenging, working with medium sized datasets (2000 x 3000 elements) in Matlab. After transitioning from R I am now fairly well versed in Matlab as well.

Finally, I am occasionally helping out putting the finishing touches on the Emissions Chapter of the Canadian Mercury Science Assessment, which I have led as chapter coordinator and lead author.

Teaching done for the Fall & Spring terms

Teaching is done until fall and during the last 2 semesters I have taught 5 courses:

  • Analytical chemistry
  • Analytical chemistry laboratory
  • Instrumental Analysis
  • Atmospheric Chemistry
  • Atmosphere and Ocean laboratory

I taught the first two courses at Bishop’s University and the latter 2 at McGill University. The Atmosphere and Ocean lab was run for the very first time. I spent the fall term designing the course (10 experiments focusing on radiation, chemical analysis, forecasting, atmospheric profiling, ocean currents… — with input from other faculty) and had a great first iteration this spring.

For my other courses I introduced new elements of learning, including student presentations (both, assessed and non-assessed as part of in-class work), revised lab report formats (using checklists for student self-assessments), individual feedback on report drafts… — classes are fairly small, not exceeding 40 students, so personalized teaching was quite easy and a pleasure to do. with high-quality feedback from students.