Overview of Aston Labs
We think of mass spectrometry as the science and technology of ions. Our interests therefore involve the construction of mass spectrometers, fundamental studies of ion reactions and collision processes, and applications to medicine, biochemistry, and organic chemistry.
News
12/2023 Congratulations to Edwin on his successful defense! Hello, Dr. Gonzalez!
07/2023 Congratulations to Lingqi, Nick, and Saquib on their successful defenses! Hello, Dr. Qiu, Dr. Morato, and Dr. Rahman!
12/2022 Interview for the Point of Inquiry on our work on prebiotic peptide formation in microdroplets is now available!
11/2022 Congratulations to Sangeeta on her successful defenses! Hello, Dr. Pandey!
10/2022 Our team was announced as the Grand Prize Winner of the NCATS ASPIRE Reduction-to-Practice Challenge!
10/2022 Farewell to Lillian, and we wish her all the best at Corteva!
09/2022 Congratulations to Lillian on her successful defenses! Hello, Dr. Chen!
07/2022 Visitors from AbbVie (Dr. Nari Talaty (our Alumni), Dr. David Wagner, Dr. Junhai Yang, Dr. Andrew Bowman, and Dr. Robert Johnson) have a great discussion with us!
07/2022 We have 3 new patents issued!
Research
A central current interest is in ambient ionization and its application in imaging tumor margins, monitoring therapeutic drugs in biofluids, following embryological development, and identifying microorganisms. Each of these experiments involves minimal sample workup. Another strong interest is in preparative mass spectrometry, both by soft landing ions onto surfaces in vacuum to generate new materials and also by collecting the products of solution-phase reactions occurring in electrospray droplets. In situ analysis using miniature mass spectrometers coupled to ambient ion sources for environmental, public safety and other applications is of interest. So, too, is on-line reaction monitoring. Ion chemistry is astonishingly rich as exemplified by nitrogen atom insertion into n-alkanes, chirally selective amino acid clustering and C-C bond formation, all being studied at atmospheric pressure.
Check out the Cooks Group Research Poster for the latest research!
Publications
Lingqi Qiu, R Graham Cooks "Pitfalls in Using Isotopic Distributions for Structural Interpretation by Mass Spectrometry" JASMS (2024)
Lingqi Qiu, R Graham Cooks "Spontaneous Oxidation in Aqueous Microdroplets: Water Radical Cation as Primary Oxidizing Agent" Angew Chemie (2024)
Lingqi Qiu, R Graham Cooks "Oxazolone mediated peptide chain extension and homochirality in aqueous microdroplets" PNAS (2024)