Please tell us a little about yourself and your journey into analytical chemistry?
I was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and I began my university studies in agronomy (BSc), followed by environmental chemistry (MSc). My MSc thesis focused on food process contaminants, and I went on to complete a PhD in natural products research, with analytical chemistry – particularly chromatography and mass spectrometry – always as a core discipline.
Since 2010, I have been part of the Analytical Chemistry Group at the Department of Plant and Environmental Science (PLEN) at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH). For the first decade, I held primarily externally funded, short-term positions as a postdoc and assistant professor. Since 2020, I have been a university-funded associate professor and head of studies for the MSc program in Environmental Science at UCPH.
Outside of work, I am a mother of four (children and adults), as well as two cats and four chickens. I enjoy swimming and spending time outdoors – but also eating, sleeping, and reading.
How did your analytical chemistry group come together, and how has it evolved over time?
During my early studies, I took Analytical Chemistry at what was then the Agricultural University (now PLEN, UCPH). I mostly remember titrations and color reactions – and that there was only one HPLC, no GC systems, and no mass spectrometers.
When the lecturer retired, a position in Analytical Chemistry opened and was taken by my colleague Jan H. Christensen, who had just completed his PhD on chemical fingerprinting of oil spills. I met Jan in the lab during my own PhD, and we quickly realized we shared the same scientific passions. He introduced me to non-target analysis, as well as to Giorgio Tomasi, who was then a postdoc working on signal processing of chromatographic data. Jan and Giorgio had already begun collaborating during their PhDs – famously, as they like to say, “over a cup of chemometrics.”
So our starting point was modest: one university-funded position, one BSc course in need of modernization, and the three of us. Together, we set out to strengthen and expand analytical chemistry teaching at UCPH, while also growing the field of chemical fingerprinting – non-target analysis applied across environmental, food, biological, and industrial contexts.
Shortly afterwards, financial pressures led to the closure of the Analytical Chemistry team at the Department of Chemistry, UCPH, leaving only associate professor Bo Svensmark. After some informal discussions (and a few beers), Bo agreed to join us. He moved to PLEN and played a key role in building the teaching portfolio that forms the backbone of the program today.
During my PhD, I also set up a small study group focused on mass spectrometry. It was an informal collective – just a group of friends moving between each other’s labs, sharing knowledge and teaching one another what we knew. In the years that followed, Bo and I joined forces and, since 2012, have co-taught the course Advanced Analytical Chemistry: Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry.
About a decade ago, Bo transitioned to part-time work – spending winters teaching and summers sailing and birdwatching. From him, I effectively “inherited” part of the university funding, likely reflecting my growing contribution to the UCPH teaching portfolio.
Giorgio and I, meanwhile, managed to stay afloat for more than a decade through a patchwork of short-term external funding and research stays abroad. Despite the uncertainty, we remained united by a shared vision: to grow analytical chemistry in Denmark and to advance non-target analysis, particularly in applications linked to the green transition.
Today, the group has expanded significantly. We now include three university-funded professors/associate professors, two externally funded associate/assistant professors (Xenia Trier and Selina Tisler), and around 30 externally funded staff members – lab managers, data scientists, technicians, postdocs, consultants, and PhD students. We have also been fortunate to attract some of our own scientific role models, who have joined us in reduced roles: Asger Baltzer Hansen, former scientist at the Danish National Environmental Research Institute and Jan’s PhD supervisor, and Kit Granby, former associate professor at the Technical University of Denmark and my MSc supervisor.
In addition, we consider the approximately 20 BSc and MSc project students who are always part of the group as integral members of our research environment. What began as a single university-funded position has, over nearly 20 years, grown into something of a large academic family.
On the teaching side, we now deliver one BSc course, four MSc courses, and nine PhD courses. Two in particular stand out. Arctic Pollution Research (next running in spring 2027) includes nine days of fieldwork in either the Arctic – at UCPH’s research station on Disko Island, Greenland – or the sub-Arctic, in Tórshavn, in collaboration with the University of the Faroe Islands. Meanwhile, Practical Multidimensional Chromatography (next running in August 2027) offers a week of hands-on training in 2D chromatography (GC, LC, and SFC) and data processing in Copenhagen, followed by a two-day symposium with international speakers hosted in Tórshavn, again in collaboration with the University of the Faroe Islands.
How has analytical chemistry education evolved in Denmark – and what role has your group played in that shift?
Around a decade ago – following sustained pressure from students – the Department of Chemistry launched Denmark’s first MSc specialization in Analytical Chemistry. Until then, it had not been possible to formally train as an analytical chemist in Denmark, despite the fact that many chemistry graduates ultimately work in this field. Compared with countries such as the Netherlands and Sweden, which have long traditions of university-level analytical chemistry training, and given the strong demand from Danish industry, this absence is difficult to explain.
That said, the situation now appears to be changing. Denmark is currently undergoing a government-driven MSc reform, and Applied Chemistry – with a strong focus on analytical chemistry and close ties to industry – has been selected as one of the first programs at UCPH to adopt the new MSc format.
The funding landscape has also evolved significantly. For several years, securing funding was a challenge. However, the launch of Innovation Fund Denmark in 2014 – built around close industry-academia collaboration and co-investment from industrial partners – opened new opportunities. This has been further strengthened by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, one of the world’s largest philanthropic foundations, which significantly expanded its research funding from around 2018 while broadening its scope.
Collaboration seems central to your group – how would you describe your working culture?
Throughout, collaboration has remained central to our approach. We continue to learn from one another, and the group particularly benefits from the close integration of analytical chemistry and data science. Without data scientists who deeply understand complex datasets – how to extract meaningful information and confidently identify compounds – it is extremely difficult to advance new instrumentation or develop non-target workflows, where off-the-shelf software is often lacking.
Equally important is the level of trust within the group. We support one another and step in when needed – whether that means covering for colleagues during extended periods away, or enabling flexibility in personal circumstances. This kind of collaborative culture allows individuals to thrive while maintaining a strong and stable research and teaching environment for both students and staff – something that remains relatively rare in academia.
Why HTC? What draws you to the meeting?
I have never really prioritized attending many international conferences. Throughout my academic career, I’ve had small children at home and a husband also working in science and industry research, so travel has required careful choices. That said, for me it really started at HPLC in Amsterdam in 2013, where I had a fantastic experience. A few things stayed with me: a short course on 2D-LC with Dwight Stoll, which was a real eye-opener, and a poster from Gert Desmet’s team where detection was performed only in the center of the LC column. It made me realize just how many brilliant research groups were out there – completely unknown to me at the time.
I also believe I met Hans-Gerd Janssen there for the first time; he later hosted one of our PhD students, Rune Græsbøll, during an external research stay. And I remember Peter Schoenmakers as a host – brilliant, funny, and incredibly welcoming to everyone.
Since then, I’ve really enjoyed being part of the European chromatography and analytical chemistry community. What has stood out to me is how open and supportive senior scientists are toward early-career researchers. At the same time, that experience in Amsterdam made me realize that, although we had strong analytical chemists in Denmark, we were still behind – working in small, dispersed teams, without a comprehensive educational framework. There was, and still is, much we can learn from larger, more established communities.
HTC brings together a similar crowd, but in a more intimate and accessible setting. It’s smaller, easy to reach from Copenhagen, and usually scheduled at a convenient time of year. And, admittedly, Belgium – with its fries, mayo, and beer – is not a bad destination either.
The younger organizing team – Deirdre, Ken, Frédéric, and Sebastiaan – bring a particularly open and friendly atmosphere to the meeting, and I’m certainly not bored with the science.
What I value most, though, is seeing how our own Copenhagen-based PhD students are already building international networks early in their careers – forming friendships they maintain across HPLC conferences and the more informal HTC symposia. That wasn’t part of my own early career, but it’s something I greatly appreciate seeing happen for the next generation.
What will you be presenting at HTC?
In non-target analysis by LC-HRMS, we often rely on data-independent acquisition and all-ions fragmentation to ensure equal representation of all measurable compounds across samples, while still enabling compound identification through fragmentation spectra. However, these spectra can be complex, as no precursor ion isolation occurs prior to fragmentation.
In this work, we explored whether adding further separation dimensions could improve analytical clarity. Specifically, in two studies on plant bioactives, we combined a second chromatographic dimension with single-pass cyclic ion mobility, enabling arrival time separation. The result is effectively a four-dimensional separation space (retention time₁ × retention time₂ × arrival time × m/z).
While this approach increases experimental and computational complexity, it also opens new possibilities. The work – carried out in collaboration with André de Villiers at the University of Stellenbosch, and as part of our PhD student Oskar Munk Kronik’s external research stay – focuses both on the experimental setup and on strategies for handling these large, complex datasets.
In the talk, I will highlight the analytical benefits of introducing these additional dimensions, including improved separation of isomers and isobars, enhanced group-type chromatographic resolution, increased mass spectral purity, and the added value of orthogonal identifiers such as second-dimension retention time and CCS values for compound identification.
Where is your research heading – and why does it matter?
My research focuses on the characterization of bioactives and other quality indicators in food crops, drugs in biological matrices, and contaminants in environmental samples – always using chromatography and HRMS.
In the coming years, a major focus will be the comprehensive mapping of the human urinary exposome – the wide range of chemical compounds we are exposed to in daily life. The goal is to better understand how this exposome links to disease outcomes, such as endocrine disruption or Parkinson’s disease. Across all our projects, we aim to use chromatography and mass spectrometry in ways that increase chemical coverage, resolution, and peak capacity, while improving compound identification and reducing matrix effects for more accurate sample comparisons.
Analytical chemistry is fundamental to progress across many scientific fields. My contribution, although modest, lies in training the next generation of analytical chemists and in generating reliable knowledge about both the beneficial compounds in our food and the potentially harmful chemicals we are exposed to. Ultimately, this work supports the transition toward a safer, healthier, and more sustainable future.
The 19th International Symposium on Hyphenated Techniques in Chromatography and Separation Technology (HTC-19) will take place from May 26–29, 2026, in Leuven, Belgium. Find out more at: https://htc-19.com/
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