Spyridon Pergantis

Visiting Professor of Chemistry Affiliation: Visiting
Education: BSc Chemistry, University of Ioannina, Greece; PhD Chemistry, University of British Columbia, Canada

sp6754@nyu.edu

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Spiros Pergantis received a B.Sc. in chemistry from the University of Ioannina, Greece, in 1989 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, in 1994. After which, he was awarded a 2 year United States National Research Council Resident Research Associateship Award to conduct research with the US Environmental Protection Agency in Las Vegas in the area of elemental speciation analysis. Subsequently, he returned to Europe as a Postdoctoral researcher, first at Utrecht University and then at the Free University in Amsterdam. However, his stay in the Netherlands was cut short when he became Lecturer of Analytical Chemistry at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK, where he served for 5 years. In 2003, he returned to Greece to join the University of Crete and is currently a professor of Analytical Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry.

His research has mainly focused on elemental speciation analysis in environmental and biological systems, especially for determining As, Se, Sb, Cr, Ag, Au, Mn and their species, their presence in metalloproteins, and nanoparticles and in individual cells. This research aims to enable a better understanding of the physicochemical properties of metals and their species in environmental and biological systems. In several cases, emphasis is placed on providing advanced analytical techniques that enable improved risk assessment with respect to the presence of metals and their species in foods and our environment.

This has included developing a series of novel molecular and atomic mass spectrometry (MS) techniques and methods. He has recently focused on developing analytical approaches for determining metal-containing nanoparticles and the metal content of individual cells, using single-particle and single-cell inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), respectively. These methods are based on using a combination of separation approaches such as ion mobility, hydrodynamic liquid chromatography, and asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation, as well as chip-based microfluidic platforms for cell and nanoparticle manipulation and subsequent introduction into ICP-MS.