QAEHS in Focus shines the spotlight on QAEHS staff and students to showcase the expertise and talent within our Centre.
Julia Lin
How long have you worked at QAEHS?
About 7 months
How do you explain your job to people?
I am sick of polluting the environment, so I have changed my direction to respond or answer to the contamination.
What is your favourite thing about working at QAEHS?
It is not every day that you get to work with the “Avengers”. Each postdoc and group leader (vigilance) are trying to find out the fate, source, and path of different chemical contaminants and their (risk) effect on human, animal, food, and environment. I get to assist them like Mystique. QAEHS is also a team of people from all around the world, where I learn about different cultures.
What is something you learned in the last week?
As most of the analytical chemists know that a sample can be run on targeted or non-targeted analysis on mass spectrometry (MS). But how do you explain them? Someone told me: Non-targeted MS analysis is like looking at the stars in the sky with our eye. We can see everything, but we do not really know which star we want to look into. Targeted MS analysis is like using a telescope to look at the sky. You can only see specific stars. If you are lucky and you know what you are looking at it’s a supernova (T1)…it will explode (i.e. fragment in MS term) to smaller parts (T2).
What has been your career path that led to your current position at QAEHS?
My background was in chemistry and I enjoy doing research. Although my current position at QAEHS was not in my planned career, it has opened up other opportunities such as working with wastewater treatment plant and breast milk samples from 20 years ago.
What is your favourite movie?
Deepsea Challenge 3D – you probably never heard of it. It is a documentary of the director of Titanic and Avatar who dived into the deepest part of sea in an Australian made submersible.
Random fact you would like to share about yourself.
One of the formulas that I developed is now selling globally, and the other one is keeping New Zealanders safe on the road.
