In this project, the intern (Dr. Dong-Jin Lee; Postdoctoral Fellow) will work at the University of Saskatchewan and at the R&D facility of our industry partners ? Pulse Crops (Canada) Association and PerkinElmer Health Sciences Canada Inc. ? to control the milling processes of selected Canadian pulse and cereal crops to prepare “fine”, “medium”, and “coarse” flours and then measure the functional properties of the obtained flours.

This internship aims at advancing the use of inductively coupled plasma (ICP) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) for the analysis of clinical samples (including whole blood) and of materials used by the semiconductor industry during their manufacturing process. The complexity of biological samples indeed limits the broad use of conventional inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) for their analysis. For instance, the measurement of a very small concentration of manganese in whole blood is highly skewed due to the presence of a huge concentration of iron.

Characterization of the energy distribution of ions generated by the plasma in an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS) instrument is necessary for a new ion source in that it influences the ion sampling process, transmission efficiency, focusing, and mass analysis in ICP-MS. These energy distribution phenomena are also analogous to the ion beam that has been generated from an electron impact ionization (EI) source. Similarly, better understanding of the ion beam profile results in a better optimization of the EI source for superior performance.

The increasing use of engineered particulate matter in a variety of fields, including medicine, cosmetics and textiles, results in greater human exposure than in the past. As this matter may be swallowed or breathed in and penetrate the blood stream where it may reach organs and exert a toxic effect, techniques are needed that can quickly measure minute amounts of this matter in various media, such as the air that we breath, the water that we drink and the food that we eat.