Professor Witold Danikiewicz Head of the group of Mass Spectrometry and Ph.D., 1984, Department of Chemistry, Warsaw University of Technology Post-doctoral position, 1987-1988, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA Habilitation, 1999, Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences Full professor, 2005

Research is concentrated on the following subjects: Studies on the reactions of organic anions in a gas phase, especially reactions of carbanions with aromatic nitrocompounds, carbonyl compounds, Michael acceptors and other electrophilic organic molecules. We have developed an efficient method for generating carbanions in a gas phase by decarboxylation of the appropriate carboxylate anions in the electrospray (ESI) ion source. These carbanions are subjected to the reactions with gaseous electrophilic reagents in the ion source or in the collision chamber of the triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. We are also using advanced quantum chemistry methods for modeling of the gas-phase ion-molecule reactions. Comparative studies of the different ionization methods applied to biologically or synthetically important coordination compounds of transition metals (eg. Hoveyda-Grubbs catalysts for metathesis reaction, complexes of porphyrins, corroles, chlorines and other nitrogen-containing macrocyles, salenes etc.) as well as free organic ligands. Our goal is to develop the best methods for MS analysis of these compounds. We are interested especially in rather unpopular methods like field desorption (FD) and atmospheric pressure photoionization (APPI, photospray). Our results show that for some classes of coordination compounds these methods give much better results that commonly used electrospray (ESI) and electron ionization (EI). Mass spectrometry studies of polyisoprenoids and other lipids. Within this subject we are cooperating with the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics PAS. We have developed efficient methods for separation and identification of polyprenols using HPLC-MS technique. Recently we are studying an application of the APPI ionization method for the MS analysis of polyisoprenoids and other lipids. Mass Spectrometry Group is cooperating with a number of research and commercial institutions in the field of identification of impurities in pharmaceuticals, pesticides, cosmetics and compounds used for their manufacturing.