Trip to the University of California, San Diego to visit Shirley

One of the first goals here in the Pratt Lab is to build an aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ATOFMS) capable of flying on an airplane. As part of her Ph.D. dissertation, Professor Kerri Pratt led the development of the aircraft ATOFMS (nicknamed Shirley) (Pratt et al. 2009, Analytical Chem.) in Professor Kim Prather's lab at the University of California, San Diego.

On Thursday, we (Prof. Pratt and myself, Matt Gunsch) left the comforts of the University of Michigan behind to embark on a two day journey to visit the Prather Lab so that I could become more acquainted with the A-ATOFMS that we are building. We departed bright and early Thursday morning from Detroit, arriving in San Diego in the early afternoon after a delayed flight and layover in Washington, DC.

Watching the sun rise at 30,000 feet.

Upon arrival to the Prather Lab, we were greeted by Jack Cahill, a 5th year graduate student who is currently working with several of the ATOFMS instruments housed in the Prather Lab. He spent the afternoon with us discussing Shirley, lending his valuable insights as we asked him all of the questions we had about the instrument and how it had been updated since Prof. Pratt's time in the Prather Lab.

Jack Cahill (left) and Matt Gunsch (right) discussing the ATOFMS.

With our heads overflowing with knowledge, we left the Prather Lab in the early evening to head out to grab some food before calling it a night. We dined at Yummy Maki Yummy Box, enjoying their delicious sushi. We called it a night shortly after, being thoroughly exhausted from our trip out.

A view of La Jolla on our way to dinner.

The following morning we met with Joe Mayer, the Prather Lab machinist who machined all of the ATOFMS instruments currently in the Prather Lab, including Shirley. We spent all morning and some of the afternoon discussing Shirley with Joe to help us get ready to begin machining our own instrument very soon. We left our meeting with Joe and headed back to the Prather Lab for some last minute questions for Jack and to pick up a 532nm laser that Professor Prather was kind enough to let us borrow for our instrument. We said our goodbyes to Jack and Shirley and headed back to the airport, stopping for some delightful pizza at Regents Pizzeria on the way. An uneventful 5 hour flight later, we were back in Michigan feeling fully prepared to begin construction on our own A-ATOFMS. Let the fun begin!