Dr Marvin Shaw will be partnering with Syft Technologies for the next three years working on fine-tuning and calibrating SIFT-MS Voice200ultra instruments for air quality applications.

Shaw completed a PhD at York University and has since worked in government labs before returning to university in 2015. He is an expert in direct determination of VOC emission using chemical ionization techniques, coupled with meteorological measurements through eddy covariance.

During November Dr Shaw visited Syft Technologies headquarters in Christchurch, New Zealand, to learn more about the technology and to share some of his application expertise.

REAL-TIME ANALYSIS

With SIFT-MS’s real-time capability and the option to van mount the Voice200ultra instrument, there is a good fit with and huge potential within the air quality field. One example of the potential of SIFT-MS in this industry is pollution source determination. A van mounted instrument has the ability to cover large areas and scan for hot spots of chemical emissions. Dynamic analysis of hazardous environments is another area where SIFT-MS will provide massive benefits to air quality scientists. Traditional techniques such as gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) lack the time resolution to get a full picture of what is happening in a dynamic environmental space. This new volume of data will be a big step towards dealing with pollution hazards in urban environments. Doug Hastie, CEO at Syft Technologies, first met Dr Shaw at a conference on mass spectrometry, where he was presenting. He immediately recognized the potential to partner with Dr Shaw. Doug commented, “our research goals align with both Dr Marvin Shaw and the Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry laboratories at York, particularly our views toward the advancement of detection technologies for a wide range of applications applicable to the twenty-first century”.