Hi, my name is Pearl Kwantwi-Barima. I am a second year graduate student. I joined the Clowers research group in Fall, 2015. Prior to graduate school, i received my BSc in chemistry from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. I also received a professional Science Masters (PSM) in Applied and Industrial Chemistry from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Pennsylvania. During the period between undergraduate and graduate school, i worked at CSIR-Water Research in the environmental division. I also worked at Coca-Cola bottling company of Ghana limited in the waste water treatment division. My research so far has been focused on characterizing gas-phase clustering reaction with degradation products of chemical warfare agents (CWA). These experiments seek to examine the stability of different cluster ions in the presence of different modifiers. The goal is to design a vapor modifier uptake separation scheme and also fill the gaps in literature. These experiments have been performed using the instrument shown below. The drift tube at the front end is an ExcellIMS MA3100 and it is coupled to a Thermo LTQ.

IMG_1870

Publications:

Kwantwi-Barima, P.; Hogan, C. J., Jr; Clowers, B. H. Deducing Proton-Bound Heterodimer Association Energies from Shifts in Ion Mobility Arrival Time Distributions. J. Phys. Chem. A 2019, 123 (13), 2957–2965.

Kwantwi-Barima, P.; Ouyang, H.; Hogan, C. J., Jr; Clowers, B. H. Tuning Mobility Separation Factors of Chemical Warfare Agent Degradation Products via Selective Ion-Neutral Clustering. Anal. Chem. 2017, 89 (22), 12416–12424.

Presentations:

Selective Gas-phase ion-vapor clustering to enhance ion mobility separation factors: Deducing Association Energies. Pearl Kwantwi-Barima, Christopher J. Hogan, Brian H. Clowers, 73rd  American Chemical Society Northwest Regional Meeting, Richland, WA, June 2018. (Oral Presentation)

Deducing Association Energies from Shifts in Arrival Time Distributions: Impacts Of Selective Gas-Phase Ion-Vapor Clustering. Pearl Kwantwi-Barima, Christopher J. Hogan, Brian H. Clowers, 66th American Society for Mass Spectrometry Annual Conference, San Diego, CA. June 2018. (Oral Presentation)

Selective Ion-Neutral Clustering To Enhance Ion Mobility Separation Factors. Pearl Kwantwi-Barima, Christopher J. Hogan Jr., Hui Ouyang, Brian H. Clowers. 65th American Society for Mass Spectrometry Annual Conference, Indianapolis, IN. June 2017. (Poster Presentation)