Dr Simon Maher BEng, MSc, PhD

Personal Statement

In the Mass Spectrometry & Instrumentation research group, our expertise is founded in engineering and analytical science. This enables us to design and build bespoke instrumentation and sensor systems, with a particular emphasis on advanced portable solutions that can be deployed at the point-of-need.

Our research is interdisciplinary, crossing several traditional subject boundaries, and we routinely collaborate with academics and industrialists from diverse fields and sectors. We have expertise in mass spectrometry, ion mobility spectrometry, ambient ionisation, ambient ion soft landing, electrospray deposition, electrospinning and surface deposition, electronic control, lateral flow assay development, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering, to name a few. We are experienced in designing and developing new sensors and analytical instruments, ion optics and electromagnetic simulations, fabrication, experimental design, automation, sample preparation, method development, method validation, method verification, system integration and miniaturisation. Our research has been applied in many application areas such as clinical diagnostics, point of care testing, biofluids analysis (saliva, sweat, whole blood, plasma, breath, urine, faeces, hair), microbiology, environmental & water analysis (drinking, surface, ground, salt water and aquaculture), agriculture, food testing, consumer products, security, defence, etc.

Our group is driven by a passion for the most complex analyses and measurement tasks, particularly those that currently lack a viable solution and those that demand innovative approaches (novel technologies), enhanced performance (sensitivity, specificity, reliability, etc.), reduced cost/time/complexity/size/power, or improved sustainability. Our collective expertise in engineering, analytical science, and data processing equips us to deliver tailored solutions for a wide spectrum of problems.

For more up-to-date information, please visit: www.liverpool.ac.uk/mass-spec or contact s.maher@liverpool.ac.uk