Lab staff
Bjørn Studer
Lab Manager
As a lab manager I'm operating, maintaining and troubleshooting ICP MS, ICP OES, IC, laser spectrometers, mass spectrometers and peripheral devices/systems on a daily basis. I am working in laboratories and managing them since 30 years. Over the years, I have developed, built and managed analytical laboratories and trained many lab users. I enjoy helping to develop new analytical techniques based on the needs of different research projects and I'm happy to provide advice on sample preparation, analytical methods and data interpretation.
Professional Experience
January 2008 -
Laboratory Manager at ETHZ, ITES, Soil Protection
since March 2015 also for Physics of Environmental Systems
since August 2018 for Environmental Inorganic Geochemistry
2016
Sabbatical with internships at Australian National University (Farquhar Lab) and at University of California (Stable Isotope Lab)
Sept. 2005 – March 2009
Team Leader of the Water Analytical Department and Quality Control Responsible at Bachema AG in Schlieren
Quality Control: Assessment of round robin tests, Supervision and controlling of method validation.
Sept. 2000 – Aug. 2005
Laboratory Assistant at ETHZ, Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, Soil Protection in Zürich
May 1989 – Aug. 2000
Laboratory Assistant ETHZ, Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, Soil Physics
April 1986 – March 1989 >
Swiss Federal Research Institute for the Agri-food Sector (Agroscope), Wädenswil
Education
2005
MSc degree on Geography (major subject) und Agricultural Economy (Minor subject)
1986 - 1989
Apprenticeship program for lab technician with specialization on agrobiology at Agroscope, Wädenswil
Caroline Stengel
Laboratory Technician
Technical Expertise
My main task is the organization and maintenance of our laboratories and analytical facilities at Eawag. Furthermore, I also train the researchers in their daily work and support students and postdocs with their lab experiments and chemical and geochemical analyses. In addition, I support the IEG group with administrative tasks.
Professional Experience
I have many years of experience in various areas of field sampling, on-site parameter determination and laboratory analytics of water, soil, sediment and ice, with main focus on groundwater sampling in different countries and analyses of aqueous samples. I am interested in a wide range of elements, especially trace elements, including selenium and arsenic as well as water isotopes.
Analytical Techniques
- ICP-MS, ICP-OES, Picarro-H/O, Photometry, HG-AFS
- HPLC, GC-MS, methods for solid and liquid sample preparation
Numa Pfenninger
I am a technician, based at Eawag, working for two different research groups. I am interested in the interaction between solids (e.g., soils, filter materials) and water and involved in different research projects. An important part of my job is the support of students and postdocs as well as the training of apprentices (lab technicians).
Analytical Support:
At Eawag we use a large range of instruments and methods for different analyses. For aqueous samples (e.g. rain water, drinking water, groundwater) I mostly use inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analyses for the quantification of trace elements such as selenium or thallium and ion chromatography (IC) for the determination of anions.
For solid samples (e.g. soils, filter materials) I also use several methods, such as x-ray fluorescence (XRF) for elemental analysis, x-ray diffraction (XRD) to identify the mineralogical structure and BET analysis to determine the surface area of solid materials. I also use several acid digestion methods (followed by aqueous elemental analyses) to determine the elemental contents of solid materials (e.g., soils and biological materials)
Mike Chan
I am a lab technician based at Eawag, working within two research groups, the group of Prof. Lenny Winkel and of Dr. Stephan Hug. I am primarily maintaining, operating and troubleshooting inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) for different research projects. With ICP-MS, I quantify several trace elements of different concentration ranges in various types of samples, such as groundwater, aerosol extracts and sediment digestives. With HPLC coupled to ICP-MS, I am identifying and quantifying the chemical forms of trace elements such as arsenic, selenium and iodine.
Furthermore, I am supporting and advising students and researchers at Eawag in their laboratory works related to trace element analysis.
Before working at Eawag, I worked in a laboratory for lab-diagnostic in human medicine, where I was mainly responsible for trace and major elements analysis by ICP-MS.