0:20
I've been doing math spectrometry mainly since I was a post doc.
I really enjoyed it.
One of the things that hooked me on mass spectrometry was the great capabilities
and the speed with which you can come up with some very important information.
When I was a post doc, one of the groups we worked with a great deal was.
Had a project with collaboration with the large hospital Mass General in
Boston there and they were over, in, at, MIT where we were.
And their interest was to see if they can look at drugs that were
present in patients very quickly so that the diagnoses would be correct.
And one thing that happened one weekend is,
a couple brought in their child, who it
looked like, to the physicians at the time,
was suffering from consumption of illicit street drugs.
And so they were concerned and they
were going to treat him, but the analytical work
done By the mass spectrometry on this child
showed that it wasn't an illicit street drug.
It was actually a prescription medication for an
allergy that one of the other children had.
And the importance of this was the fact that had they
treated the child for an illicit street drug, the child probably
would have died because That was exactly the wrong therapy for
the problem the child had with this aller, other prescription medication.
So, it just really showed to me the
power and the importance of good analytical procedure.
Quick diagnosis of something and then being able to apply it
in a real-world situation to people that need this kind of help.
And so I found that very exciting
and interesting and I always found chemistry interesting,
but this gave you a very quick
demonstrated human impact of that type of science.
2:19
Well, I mean, I must say I just have always liked chemistry.
And, I would liken chemistry to solving crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles.
I like the three dimensionality, I like the way things fit together.
I like understanding the dimensions that chemistry gives you in life.
And it's just kind of fun, so it makes sense to me.
And, you know, when you talk about lipids and fats
and all these different things that go into our bodies.
Those are all chemicals, and I find that
interesting to understand how they work together, how
they work Against one another, and so it's
just a very interesting field in that regard.
And of course, I've gotten into the [INAUDIBLE] and
analytcal technology because that technology helps people solve problems
with regard to how these chemicals exist, how they
work together, what impacts they have on biological systems.
And it's very exciting to see what it can do.
>> If you can do it all again, would you?
>> Yeah, yeah.
It's been a good career, I enjoy what I do.
You know, my job here I get to work with a lot of students.
I get to work with a lot of people that are interested in solving problems.
And I find that still very fun part of my job to work on solving various problems.
That people are interested in and there's just such
a wide array that we can apply our techniques to
that it keeps you stimulated because you're thinking about
all sorts of different things and how to solve these.
You know various problems people have and it's a real challenge.
>> So what's your research about now?
>> Currently we have two research projects.
In particular, I'd like to mention, that are kind of fun
and interesting and they catch on one another though they're separate.
Though we're working with Adelle Dacruz.
Who also has a position with the North Carolina Museum Art.
And they have many paintings and other pieces of artwork that are
older and have been treated over the years to try to preserve them.
Well typically many of these preservatives degrade themselves, okay?
And so these preservatives that are on the surface.
Most of the paintings are degrading and reducing the quality
of the paintings and so they'd like to get them off.
And yet, they don't, nobody even label them
and what they were when they put them on.
So here we can be a hundred, two hundred and three hundred
years later and have really limited ability to know what that treatment was.
So to remove it, they need it characterized.
4:57
Because you can't remove all these things with the same methods.
So, with the analytical chemistry, we are working on and the
methods we're trying to develop that have been proven in another laboratory.
We would be able to take very small samples.
From the edges like, the rim of painting, characterize the
chemicals that have been used for those kind of treatments.
And that would allow them to know what would be the best methods of restoration.
So that's kind of an interesting one because
it'll allow us to look at fats and lipids.
Which are from oils, we, we have a look at proteins which
might come from egg whites or some other case center, some other material.
And then sugars because they can be important preservatives as well.
So we developing methods for all three groups.
Now that connects to a different project we
have with people and the classical studies department.
Carla Atanacio's group is interested what was transported in
very large pots in the Mediterranean in about 2000 years ago.
Some place between 2000, 500 BC and 500 AD.
So these pieces of these parts pots can be taken.
You can take them, and grind them up, extract them, which is
a chemical treatment which pulls the materials away from the solid material.
And then you can analyze those using similar methods for oils,
fats, proteins, sugars, or the residues of wine.
because you'd like to know, were they're transporting honey, or were they
transporting olive oil, you know, just what materials were in those large pots.
This will give them a look or an idea
about what the commerce of the period was like.
And so we, we'll be analyzing for some of the
same materials, the fats and the oils so the oils would
relate to whether it's olive oil, whether it's pine nuts you
know, because they would all have different compositions than the oils.
If they had some sort of fats in there, we'll
be able to look for cholesterol and other things like that.
Now and so that's similar challenge which we can compare to the work
with the artwork, which is some of our methods will cross over on both projects.
It's very interesting to then be making these
connections with people in very different areas of study.
They're not just necessary in the sciences,
they can be very much in the humanities.
Prof. Dorian A. CanelasAssistant Professor of the Practice
