Since 2017 we are associated partners of the CLOUD campaigns at CERN. From 2017 - 2021 within the CLOUD-Motion project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No.764991 and since 2022 in the CLOUD-DOC, one of the 144 MSCA Doctoral Networks funded by the EC.
Core of the projects are experiments conducted at an aerosol chamber that is exposed to a CERN elementary particle beam where the effects of cosmic rays on aerosol and cloud formation is efficiently simulated (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cetS2ScyDpI)
We contribute through our expertise in mass spectrometry, giving fundamental MS workshops and supervising PhD students in cooperation with the swiss company Tofwerk. Within this collaboration a new ionization/sampling concept was developed. It allows to record electron ionization (EI) and chemical ionization (CI) information of compounds within a single gas chromatographic run. The CI source is based on a special plasma developed at the BUW. This instrument, called ec-TOF, was launched in mid 2023 (EC-TOF - Simultaneous Electron and Chemical Ionization MS).
