Episode 69: Droplet Cyclic Ion Mobility Mass Spec: Compressing Months of Enzyme Screening Into Just 14 Hours!

<p>What if you could compress 179 days of grueling laboratory workflow into just 14 hours?In this episode of <a href="https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCU9oYSK_peqfuCrwpnv4fqA"> @ChromatographyTalk </a> , <a href="https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UC_VaXQ_xrx4881G8Fo4dxDg"> @Organomation </a> General Manager David Oliva sits down with analytical chemist Laura Penabad to discuss her groundbreaking new research in biocatalysis and high-throughput screening. Evolving engineered enzymes typically requires checking thousands of variants—a massive bottleneck when traditional Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) runs take minutes per sample. Laura reveals how her team built a modular screening platform that shatters this limitation, running samples 128 times faster than standard methods without sacrificing analytical accuracy.Laura breaks down the &quot;orchestra&quot; of technologies making this possible, including coupling nanoliter droplet microfluidics with Cyclic Ion Mobility-Mass Spectrometry (cIM-MS) to separate complex chemical isomers in milliseconds. She also shares the chaotic but triumphant behind-the-scenes stories of her PhD journey—from presenting a &quot;comically bad&quot; early poster at ASMS to recruiting an undergraduate mechanical engineer to build custom automation software from scratch.If you are an early-career researcher, a mass spec enthusiast, or curious about the future of synthetic biology and machine learning in chemistry, this episode is packed with invaluable intuition and advice.#MassSpectrometry #AnalyticalChemistry #Chromatography #Biocatalysis #DirectedEvolution #IonMobility #PhDJourney #LabAutomation #WomenInSTEM #SyntheticBiology</p>