Life Before AS:MIT

I have undertaken my Secondary Education in Cyprus (2001-2004) and I graduated from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, in 2009 with a degree in Chemistry (Grade : Very Good, 7.03/10). My final year research project was on: “Validation of HPLC Methods for Pharmaceutical Analysis of Idarubicin Hydrochloride solution for Injection and Miconazole Nitrate cream and powder”. This research included methods validated: Assay, pH influence test, robustness, degradation process, benzoic acid assay (in miconazole), assay of impurities, temperature and light influence test and comparatives test. This project was conducted under the supervision of Michael. A. Koupparis. In fact, during this project Ι worked with a fellow AS:MIT student, Marina Konstantopoulou.

It was during my first degree that i realised that i am more fascinated by Analytical Chemistry and Instrumental Techniques and that is why i decided to pursue my further career by doing the AS:MIT MSc programme at the University of Warwick.

 

AS: MIT MSc- 2010-2011

The first half of the year included taught modules while the second half was based on a research project, under the supervision of an academic or a researcher from industry. This combination, provides the student with an essential background in Analytical Science but also enables students to work on their own and gain practise in an analytical laboratory, while preparing them for the industrial world. For my research I’ve chosen to work under the supervision of Prof. Steven P. Brown, in a project where I worked on the ‘‘Development of a novel Solid-State NMR Methodology for Measuring Longer-Range Distances’’. More information about the project can be found below. I’ve chosen this project because I considered it a challenge. Maybe not the wisest thing to do, as my prior knowledge about NMR and quantum mechanics was 0.5 from a scale 0 to 10. But I felt that if I was not ‘forced’ to study this difficult concept I would try and avoid it for the rest of my life.

However now that everything has come to an end, the feeling of proving to my own self especially when I did not believed in me, that I can succeed and overcome different problems, is what this past year has taught me and what I am carrying with me now that I am leaving, along with the memories and friends that i made.

Research Project

The basis of this project involved working on the development of a novel solid-state NMR methodology used to determine distances in uniformly ¹³C-labelled samples, making use of the inherent dependence of the dipolar coupling on the internuclear distance. However, in uniformly labelled compounds, ‘‘dipolar truncation’’ describes how the dominant effect of the much larger dipolar couplings due to shorter distances, e.g., for directly bonded carbon atoms, hinders the measurement of longer-range distances.

Internuclear couplings between selected homonuclear spin pair in a multiply-labelled samples have been determined by solid-state NMR spin echo experiments when the spin echoes are induced by a double frequency selective π pulse (cosine modulated Gaussian pulse). In particular, the method is based on probing under sample spinning off the magic angle the spin echo modulation due to a specific pair of dipolar-coupled nuclei that are selectively excited.

In this research, experimental work using U-¹³C, ¹⁵N, L-histidine along with density matrix simulations were combined to study the effect of changing the duration of the double frequency selective pulse. The pulse sequence followed was the one shown on the figure below.

 

 

 

 

 

Me with the Love of my life, my precious Godson !!