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PTR-TOF Training at Its Best – “hands-on” PTR-MS 2019 Events Review

Close to 50 users gathered in Innsbruck for the 2019 PTR-TOF training

We reached out to the steadily growing base of IONICON instrument users in fall 2018, announcing the 2019 “hands-on” PTR-MS training course and the 3rd IONICON User-Day.

The response was overwhelming and after receiving close to 50 applications, we had to close the registration process in order to make sure all our international guests could benefit from the strictly limited hands-on workshop availability. In the meantime, IONICON experts spent countless hours preparing for the training workshops to be conducted in small groups at the beginning of February 2019, in Innsbruck – hometown of PTR-MS.

The events started with an introductory talk to chemical ionization time of flight – mass spectrometry by Prof. Armin Wisthaler, renowned PTR-MS expert from the University of Oslo. Then all attendees got their individual schedules and went in small groups to various hands-on workshops covering many aspects of the daily use of PTR-TOF instruments, incl. getting to know the instrument part by part, setting up measurements, optimizing the PTR-TOF, calibrating it thoroughly, automating the measurement tasks, treating the data with various software tools and last but not least, maintaining & troubleshooting the whole system.

IONICON CEO Lukas Märk introducing Prof. Armin Wisthaler and welcoming all hands-on participants to the 2019 training events

A special social evening event at a famous historic castle, dating back to medieval times, was not to be missed before the second day of training took place.

The 3rd IONICON User-Day featured an expert panel from industry & academia. Each holding short keynote lectures on challenges of sampling, choice of materials, quality assurance, ion-chemistry and advanced data processing, before inviting all participants to join a lively discussion and exchange on best practices.

After three intensive days full of learning and interaction with experts from various relevant fields, the 8th International PTR-MS Conference opened its doors welcoming all participants for the week ahead…