Over the course of the semester, our trainees are reviewing webinars in their given fields and preparing abstracts to help colleagues outside their discipline make an informed choice about watching them. As our program bridges diverse disciplines, these abstracts are beneficial for our own group in helping one another gain key knowledge in each other’s fields. We are happy to share these here for anyone else who may find them helpful.
Advanced Analytical Tools for Monitoring Food Packaging Materials
Sarah Dubail, Packaging Coatings Senior Regulatory Analyst, The Sherwin-Williams Company
On demand webinar
Waters Corporation
Watch on the Waters website >>
Analysis by Shannon Berneche:
Have you ever wondered how analytical chemistry techniques, specifically mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography, can impact human health? How could they be useful or impact human health? This webinar gives a great example of how this type of laboratory technique can be useful for applications in industry while also working towards a safer and healthier world. In this talk, Dr. Dubail explains both the importance (i.e., the real-world applications) and the technical aspects of the problem which this talk addresses: testing the safety of the materials used in packaging food in cans. This has a huge impact on public health due to the ubiquity of canned food, and therefore is very important and impactful work.
Cans used to be coated with bisphenol A (BPA), but this substance is now known to be harmful to human health. This creates a need for new materials which can be used for this purpose, and Dr. Dubail is one of the scientists taking on this challenge.
In this talk, Dr. Dubail explains her thorough knowledge of the regulations which apply to creating these products which come into contact with food, something that I haven’t thought about as a researcher in academia. I found it interesting to learn about these types of things which researchers in industry need to know in order to be successful, and I think other grad students will find this interesting as well in case they are interested in a career in industry.
Finally, she discusses the analytical techniques and challenges associated with creating materials for coating cans. This involves mass spectrometry, the analytical technique which I am using in my research. It is very interesting to see how this technique can be used in industry and the unique challenges this brings which I was not familiar with, such as meeting certain regulations for materials that come into contact with food.
Other graduate students should watch this webinar to see a great example of how the techniques we use in the lab may be used in other areas such as in industry and to improve or protect public health.