Meng Hu

Current position:

PhD at Helmhotz-Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ

Contact:

+49/(0)341/2351823

meng.hu@ufz.de


Picture Fellow

Current research

LC-HRMS has emerged as a mature technique for the structure elucidation of emerging toxicants in environmental samples. However, data evaluation procedures lag behind these analytical developments and their performance has hardly been assessed so far for environmental samples. Thus, this study will assess the performance of (i) software tools for chromatogram and spectral data processing to identify peaks of individual compounds along with their molecular formula and (ii) software-based approaches to derive a low number of likely candidate structures for these molecular formulas. To this end, spiked and unspiked samples with a known occurrence of micropollutants will be used. Besides, a combination of simple and cost-efficient biological and chemical tools previously developed will be applied in a European demonstration program for the assessment of four sites affected by different sources of pollution to demonstrate the applicability of EDA within conventional monitoring and assessment schemes. Furthermore, based on the outcomes of the European demonstration program, a higher tier EDA will be conducted at selected sites to identify emerging toxicants that are not included in current priority pollutant and (national) river basin specific pollutant lists and thus in routine chemical screening. This approach will include a range of different biotests, analytical and computational tools.

Expertise

  • Effect-Directed Analysis
  • HPLC-HRMS/MS
  • GC/MS
  • R using and programming
  • Structure elucidation
  • Environmental chemistry

Research interests

  • Effect-directed analysis (EDA) of complex environmental contamination
  • Non target screening of contaminates
  • Peak picking optimization
  • Retention prediction
  • Fragmentation prediction

Curriculum vitae

since 2012

PhD student at the Department of Effect-directed analysis, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research. Topic of PhD: “Structure elucidation combining accurate mass LC-MS/MS approaches with models and computer tools to predict retention and fragmentation”

2010-2012

Master of Science at the Stockholm University, Sweden. Title of thesis: “Development of Screening Methods for Potentially Hazardous Compounds in Textiles using GC-MS and LC-MS”

2004-2008

Bachelor of Science at Nanchang University, China. Title of thesis: “A metal-organic frameworks with copper ion and 3, 3’, 4, 4’- Biphenyl tetracarboxylic acid"

Presentations

Hu, M., Schulze T. , Schymanski E., Ruttkies C., Neumann S., Brack W. and Krauss M., (2014): Exploring the Performance of a Nontarget Screening Workflow on Known Environmental Contaminants, Oral presentation at the 20th International Mass Spectrometry Conference (IMSC) Geneva, 24-29 August 2014.

Hu, M., Krauss, M., Schulze, T.,Ulrich, N. and Brack, W.,(2013): From molecular formula to structure – comparing software-based strategies for the identification of unknowns from LC-high resolution MS data, Poster presentation at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC Europe). Glasgow, 12-16 May 2013.

Publications

Brack, W., Govender, S., Schulze, T., Krauss, M. and Hu, M., et al. (2013): EDA-EMERGE: an FP7 initial training network to equip the next generation of young scientists with the skills to address the complexity of environmental contamination with emerging pollutants., Environmental Sciences Europe, 25:18.

Deng, S., Zhang, N., Chen, C., Xiao, W. and Hu, M., et al. (2009): Solvothermal Synthesis, Structures and Spectroscopic Properties of two Chalcanthite Derivatives. Chinese Journal of Applied Chemistry, 26:6.

NEWS

EDA-EMERGE Newsletter

newsletter

Workplace

Marie Curie ITN EU-FP7 project