Short CV of Magda Claeys, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Magda Claeys(born in 1948) is an organic analytical chemist. She received her BSc (1970) and PhD in Chemistry (1974) from Ghent University, Belgium. Already at that time she focused on organic/biomolecular mass spectrometry.
After her PhD studies she spent 16 months at the Laboratory of Clinical Sciences of the National Institute of Mental Health (Bethesda, USA). During that time she developed and applied a quantitative gas chromatography/mass spectrometry method for the trace determination of antidepressant drugs in body fluids.
In 1979, she became associated with the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Antwerp (UA). She worked for about 9 years in the research group of Experimental Pharmacology, and focused during this period on the structural characterization of cyclo-oxygenase and lipoxygenase metabolites of polyunsaturated fatty acids (i.e., arachidonic and linoleic acid).
In 1987, she started her own research group of bio-organic mass spectrometry. Initially, major emphasis was given to the investigation of the fragmentation behavior of long-chain fatty acids under high-energy collisional activation conditions and the development of methods for the structural characterization of flavonoids which are major and ubiquitous secondary plant metabolites with a wide range of biological activities. In collaboration with the research group of Pharmacognosy she also contributed to the structural elucidation of unknown biologically active plant metabolites isolated from medicinal plants.
In 1997, she started working on the characterization of the organic fraction of atmospheric aerosols and focused on the structural characterization of polar molecules that can serve as indicator compounds for aerosol sources or source processes and the development of suitable analytical methods. A major achievement in this area was the discovery of novel polar molecules with an isoprene skeleton, i.e., 2-methyltetrols, formed through photo-oxidation of isoprene, in rainforest aerosols from the Amazon basin. This discovery led to a publication in 2004 in Science. Her recent research deals with the chemical characterization of the organic fraction of atmospheric aerosols, with emphasis on biogenic secondary organic aerosol from isoprene, α-pinene, and green leaf volatiles.
Magda Claeys was subsequently research associate, senior research associate, and from 1995 up to 2000, research director of the Fund for Scientific Research (FWO) of Belgium/Flanders. In 2000 she became professor at the UA and since 1 October 2013 she is a honorary professor. She is author or co-author of over260 refereed publications in international journals, has made several presentations at international conferences, and has supervised 17 PhD theses. Her current h-index is 51.She served on the editorial boards of Mass Spectrometry Reviews (MSR), the Journal of Mass Spectrometry (JMS), Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry (RCM), and the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (JASMS).
She was contractor in a number of EU-funded projectsand she wasa promoter in network projectson atmospheric aerosol research of the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BelSPO) and of projects, which were funded by the FWO and by the Special Research Fund of the UA.
She was actively involved in the Belgian Society of Mass Spectrometry as a co-founder (1995), secretary (1996 –2000), chairwoman (2001 – 2008) and thereafter as a regular member of the board (2009 – 2014).