2023
The American Chemical Society Subdivision of Chromatography and Separations Chemistry sponsors two student poster awards with a prize of $250 USD each. CerTech sponsored one Industrial Research & Development poster award in 2022 with a prize of €250.
Multidimensional GC Poster Award 2022
Lina Mikaliunaite, University of Washington, USA
Computational method for untargeted determination of cycling yeast metabolites using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry
Biography
Lina Mikaliunaite studied chemistry at Pepperdine University, where she received her B.S. degree in 2020. She is currently a 3rd year graduate student in the Synovec lab at University of Washington, where she is completing her PhD in Analytical Chemistry. She focuses on advancements and applications of GC×GC instrumentation, as well as applied chemometrics.
Poster Description
A comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography instrument with quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC×GC-qMS) is developed and evaluated, by retrofitting a commercial GC-qMS instrument with a high temperature diaphragm valve (HT-DV) modulator. A porous layer open tubular (PLOT) column in the first dimension (1D), and a more polar wall coated open tubular (WCOT) column in the second dimension (2D) were used. The HT-DV can modulate analytes of any volatility and the combination of the PLOT and WCOT columns provides ample separation selectivity for samples containing an extended range of volatility from highly volatile analytes to analytes of more moderate volatility. In addition to instrument development, we describe data visualization considerations when upgrading from GC-qMS to GC×GC-qMS.
Lina Mikaliunaite, University of Washington, USA
Computational method for untargeted determination of cycling yeast metabolites using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry
Biography
Lina Mikaliunaite studied chemistry at Pepperdine University, where she received her B.S. degree in 2020. She is currently a 3rd year graduate student in the Synovec lab at University of Washington, where she is completing her PhD in Analytical Chemistry. She focuses on advancements and applications of GC×GC instrumentation, as well as applied chemometrics.
Poster Description
A comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography instrument with quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC×GC-qMS) is developed and evaluated, by retrofitting a commercial GC-qMS instrument with a high temperature diaphragm valve (HT-DV) modulator. A porous layer open tubular (PLOT) column in the first dimension (1D), and a more polar wall coated open tubular (WCOT) column in the second dimension (2D) were used. The HT-DV can modulate analytes of any volatility and the combination of the PLOT and WCOT columns provides ample separation selectivity for samples containing an extended range of volatility from highly volatile analytes to analytes of more moderate volatility. In addition to instrument development, we describe data visualization considerations when upgrading from GC-qMS to GC×GC-qMS.

Multidimensional LC Poster Award 2022
Liesa Verscheure, RIC Biologics
Multidimensional LC-MS with multi-method option and parallel middle-up and bottom-up MS acquisition for the in-depth characterization of antibodies
Biography
Liesa Verscheure received a Master’s degree in Biochemical Engineering Technology from Ghent University, Belgium in 2017. After her Master studies she joined RIC group (Kortrijk, Belgium) where she is completing her industrial PhD which focusses on the development and application of innovative liquid chromatography (LC) and mass spectrometry (MS) tools for in-depth characterization of biopharmaceuticals. For this PhD project, a contribution between RIC group and Ghent University is established via a Baekeland mandate of Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship (VLAIO). She focusses on pushing the boundaries of current separation science through optimized instrumentation platforms including multi-dimensional LC (mD-LC) set-ups, native MS and higher order structure analysis.
Poster Description
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are large and highly heterogenous resulting in hundreds of possible structural variants that differ in post-translational modifications (PTMs), amino acid sequence, higher order structure, etc. Inherent to this, many challenges are encountered in analytics to secure the quality, efficacy, and safety of the product.
In recent years, multi-attribute analysis has become a hot topic in the biopharmaceutical analysis domain where the number of characterization assays is reduced by using, for example, multidimensional liquid chromatography (mD-LC) with optionally, chemical, electrochemical or enzymatic reactors incorporated.
A next-generation protein analyzer is presented that consists of a first dimension multi-method option (choice between SEC/CEX/HIC) allowing sequential assessment of size, charge, and hydrophobic variants, second dimension RPLC column for desalting and reduction prior to middle-up MS analysis, third dimension on-column trypsin digestion followed by bottom-up MS-based peptide mapping in the fourth dimension. The applicability of this versatile mD-LC-MS protein analyzer was demonstrated for the full characterization of a therapeutic antibody.
Awards History
Multidimensional GC Award (ACS Subdivision of Chromatography & Separations Chemistry)
- 2023: Lina Mikaluinaite, University of Washington, USA
- 2022: Emily Higgins Heppler, Arizona State University, USA
- 2021: Caitlin Cain, University of Washington, USA
- 2023: Liesa Verscheure, RIC Biologics, Belgium
- 2022: Alessia Arena, University of Messina, Italy
- 2021: Devin Makey, University of Michigan, USA
- 2022: Laura McGregor, SepSolve Analytical