Month: April 2013

Off Magnets and MassSpec

Hello everybody!

My PhD project revolves around the usage of metabolic phenotyping in epidemiological studies and the MWAS (Metabolome Wide Association Study). Basically, the metabolic phenotyping of urine biofluid samples from participants in epidemiologic studies makes it possible to look for associations between metabolites, nutrition and the health status of individuals and populations. We then have huge ammounts of very rich and complex data to explore and a lot of detective work to do. Handling all this is an Herculean task that cannot be accomplished without automation and computational tools. I’m developing some of these tools and applying them on data from epidemiolgical studies on blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

Busy, busy, busy!

Last week was one of the busiest weeks since starting our PhDs so I’m afraid my blog is a little late this week! I will explain this a little more below though…

As my first blog I should really talk a little about my PhD project. The main focus of my project is to look at the metabolic profile of preterm infants and identify any prognostic markers that are associated with developing infants. I have a background in microbiology so I will be incorporating this into my project by investigating the host-microbial interactions also. I am very excited about my project (obviously) and hope that my previous knowledge/experience will come in handy.

Easter break, Swiss chocolate and working from home

Starting my first ever post with “Easter break” and “holiday” is risky as these words are usually banned from the PhD vocabulary, but bear with me…

First thing first, my project focus is on the regulatory mediators of inflammation. Their characterization and quantification is a first step in order to identify surgery patients with a high-risk of post-operative complications. As this project combines at the same time work in the lab (like sample preparation and acquisition) and on the computer (data analysis and processing), it’s fairly easy to change your focus depending on the equipment availability or your inspiration.

It’s quite common for the most computational intensive tasks to take hours or even days, but luckily you don’t always have to go back to the SAF building to collect the result, study them and send another batch of calculations during the weekend.