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Overview of Aston Labs

Welcome!

We think of mass spectrometry as the science and technology of ions. Our interests therefore involve construction of mass spectrometers, fundamental studies of ion reactions and collision processes and applications to medicine, biochemistry and organic chemistry. 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!

News

12/2023 Congratualtions to Edwin on his succesful 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! (https://pointofinquiry.org/2022/12/new-discovery-in-the-chemistry-of-life/)

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! Check here!

06/2022 Congratulations to Prof. Cooks for receiving the Torbern Bergman medal from the Swedish Chemical Society

06/2022 Congratulations to Kai for getting the Robert R. Squires award!

06/2022 Congratulations to Hannah for getting the Alice Watson Kramer awards!

05/2022 Welcome our new group members Thomas Sams and Joshua Mendoza to join Aston Labs!

04/2022 Congratulations to Hannah and Lucas on their successful defenses! Hello, Dr. Brown and Dr. Szalwinski!

04/2022 Congratulations to Nicolás for being awarded 1st place in CBM Three-Minute Thesis Competition!

04/2022 Congratulations to Kai-Hung for winning the Eastman Summer Fellowship!

04/2022 A modified LTQ (Phoenix) is reborn from ash and is now keen for 2D MS/MS experiments!
               Thanks for the tremendous efforts from Eric and Lucas!

04/2022 Congratulations to Hannah for winning the Thomas Keough Award!

03/2022 Dr. Steven Pringle from Waters Co. visited Aston Labs! Nice to meet you!

03/2022 Welcome our new group member Mahdiyeh Shahi to join Aston Labs!

 

Latest Publications (view all)

Lingqi Qiu, R Graham Cooks "Oxazolone mediated peptide chain extension and homochirality in aqueous microdroplets" PNAS (2024)

MyPhuong T. Le, Dylan T. Holden, Jeremy M. Manheim, Eric T. Dziekonski, Kiran Iyer, R Graham Cooks "Two-dimensional Tandem Mass Spectrometry for Biopolymer Structural Analysis" Angew Chem (2023)

L. Edwin Gonzalez, Dalton T. Snyder, Harman Casey, Yanyang Hu, Donna M. Wang, Megan Guetzloff, Nicole Huckaby, Eric T. Dziekonski, J. Mitchell Wells, and R. Graham Cooks "Machine-Learning Classification of Bacteria Using Two-Dimensional Tandem Mass Spectrometry" Anal Chem (2023)

Announcements

We have an interview for the Point of Inquiry on our work on prebiotic peptide formation in microdroplets. The podcast episode is now available on multiple platforms (https://pointofinquiry.org/2022/12/new-discovery-in-the-chemistry-of-life/

We have released our demo for the high-throughput DESI-MS system, DESI-2D MS/MS, and brain cancer diagnosis.

Please check our research page or YouTube channel!

Find the podcast on our high-throughput DESI-MS system here!

(Apple Podcast)