Vita

I graduated from High School (Abitur) in 2002. Then, I joined the University of Wuppertal (Bergische Universität Wuppertal - BUW) to study “Applied Science”, an interdisciplinary study program with the core subjects “Chemistry” and “Informatics”.

At the end of this program, i joined the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry workgroup (PTC) at BUW for my bachelor thesis (which was written in german language) with the title “Bestimmung von Ionenakzeptanzverteilungen in der Atmospheric Pressure Laser Ionisation Mass Spectrometry (APLI-MS)”.

I got my Bachelor of Science degree in 2006.

Afterwards, I started the master study program “Chemistry” at BUW. I stayed in PTC for my master thesis (also in german) with the title “Räumliche Ionenakzeptanzverteilungen (DIA) in der Atmospheric Pressure Laser Ionization Mass Spectrometry (APLI-MS)”. At this point i was already very interested in mass spectrometry, the dynamics and chemistry of molecular ions and their interaction with neutral background gas.

I graduated in 2009 with Master of Science in chemistry.

In the same year, I started with my Ph.D. program in PTC. I stayed within the domain of “molecular mass spectrometry” which is a core research interest of the PTC. I focused more on numerical simulation of ion dynamics. I extended simulation programs to become able to simulate the ion trajectories in an atmospheric pressure ionization (API) ion source during an spatially resolved laser ionization (APLI) experiment. Extensive fluid dynamical simulation (computational fluid dynamics - CFD) and experimental flow simulation result validation in cooperation with the Institute for Turbomachinery at the University of Aachen (RWTH) was required to determine the required input data for the ion trajectory simulations.

During my Ph.D. program I also integrated basic simulation of chemical reactions into the ion trajectory simulation application.

I graduated with my Ph.D. in 2014, with my thesis titled “Simulation of Ion Dynamics in Atmospheric Pressure Ionization Sources”.

I stayed in PTC at BUW as postdoc researcher and fortunately got a permanent occupation. The development and application of custom simulation programs for the modeling of space charge effects and trajectories of ions with intensive gas interaction is still a primary research topic for me. The Ion Dynamics Simulation Framework (IDSimF) is a result of this effort.Furthermore, the dynamics of charged droplets aspirated into the vacuum systems of mass spectrometers originating from Electrospray Ionization (ESI) has become second focus.

Current Research Interests

  • Numerical simulation of ion trajectories with consideration of space charge effects and background gas interaction
  • Ion dynamics in ion traps
  • Modeling of ion mobility and differential ion mobility (high field mobilities)
  • Ion dynamics and reaction kinetics in ion mobility spectrometers (IMS, DMS, TWIMS, TIMS)
  • Further development of IDSimF and IDSimPy
  • Simulation of gas dynamics in ion sources and inlet stages of mass spectrometers
  • Application and extension of open source simulation packages (SPARTA, OpenFOAM) for ion trajectory / ion dynamics simulations
  • Fundamentals of ESI, electrochemistry of ESI
  • Aspiration of charged droplets into MS vacuum systems, dynamics of aspirated charged droplets in MS vacuum systems