Luigi Mondello

Meet Luigi Mondello

Most important lesson The most important lesson that I have learned in my career is that I should alway loved what I’m doing – and only with enthusiasm and hard work can you reach recognition.

Encounters with serendipity I was at the ISCC meeting in 2006, and together with my co-worker Peter Tranchida, we showed the benefits (in terms of resolution) of using a split-line in comprehensive GC experiments to Leonid Blomberg. Leon took a look at the data (later published in Anal. Chem. 2007, 79, 2266-2275) and immediately made the following observation “...apart from the split line, there must be some other factor contributing to such a great gain in resolution”. He was right. But it took us about six years to find the other factor (J. Sep. Sci. 2013, 86, 212-218).

Most unexpected moment The most unexpected thing that happened in my scientific career was when Prof. Sandra called me and informed that the Scientific Committee of the ISCC symposium had appointed me as Chairman of the conference. I could never have expected to take this important position among other leading scientists.

Eye on the horizon At the moment, my research group has become quite large both in terms of number of members and instrumentation. We have just made a big move (July 2015) to a new lab located in Messina (PANLAB), with additional high-tech instrumentation (NMR, MALDI ToF/ToF, magnetic sector MS, APGC-qqq, etc), and so my next aim is to rapidly reach a 100 percent operational state. After that, I would like to start organizing basic and advanced training courses in the field of chromatography-mass spectrometry.

Generally in my field, I expect to see miniaturization, rapid reliable analysis, and increasingly powerful MS.