Speaker: Bill McDonough, University of Maryland

Topic: I didn’t know you could do that

Date: Monday, October 16, 2023

Time: 6:15 pm Dinner, 7:15 pm Presentation

Location: Shimadzu Scientific Instrument, Inc. Training Center 7100 Riverwood Drive, Columbia, MD 21046 (Directions) This will be an in-person meeting.

Dinner: Please RSVP to Jonathan Ferguson (jonathan.ferguson33@gmail.com) by Friday, October 13 if you will be attending the dinner.

Abstract: When I started out in the mass spectrometry business, I didn’t have any background (undergraduate degree in anthropology). However, by the end of my PhD, I was pretty good at analyzing samples on a thermal ionization mass spectrometer (TIMS). However, ignorance was an advantage, and nobody told me what I could and could not do. We bought bits and pieces, put them together, and we learned how to do things; we called our friends, and I asked lots of questions. The best two things that happened (1) we had good friends, and (2) we got a lot of money to start out with. We were not entirely stupid, but we were naïve. That helps a lot. Tonight, I’ll talk about a 30 year journey of fun LA-ICPMS accomplishments by our team that covers nuclear forensic, cutting-edge geochemistry, whodunit poisoning stories, pollution in the region, and getting ready for working on the Moon.
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Our WBMSDG board has decided to include two lightning talks before the main talk starting on our October event. Each lightning talk lasts 7 minutes with no more than 5 slides, and 5 minutes for Q&A for both talks. The desired speakers are early-career researchers/scientists in mass spec-related areas. They can be junior scientists, postdoctoral fellows, graduate or undergraduate students.

Please submit abstracts to co-chairs to apply for the lightning talks, and our board members will review the abstracts on a rolling basis.

Structure the abstract (maximum 300 words) with the following headings:
Title (maximum 20 words)
Authors and affiliations (Including senior authors/PIs)
Introduction
Methods
Results
Conclusions