KRISTÝNA KANTNEROVÁ
Role: Assistant Professor Area: Analytical Chemistry, Environmental Chemistry Employer: UCT Prague; former: University of Colorado Boulder, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen), ETH Zürich, Empa Dübendorf Language: Czech, English Mentees: students Form: Online, Personal meet up
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Kristýna has been involved in chemistry since high school when she participated in the Chemistry Olympiad and clubs. In her final year at high school and during her studies at the UCT Prague, she worked in a laboratory at the Jaroslav Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She completed her PhD studies at the Swiss research institute EMPA, during which she developed a new method for the isotopic analysis of nitrous oxide by laser spectroscopy and its applications. She also spent three months on a research fellowship at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, which was supported by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
She was then further involved in nitrous oxide isotopic analysis within her post doc position at ETH Zurich, specifically dealing with the interface of analytical and environmental chemistry. In 2021, Kristýna applied for a Swiss national grant (SNF postdoc mobility) for two years in the USA, which was approved. Thus, in 2022, she worked at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Bremen on the development of a method for isotopic analysis of oxyanions using Orbitrap mass spectrometry, then continued this topic for two years at CU Boulder under an awarded postdoc grant.
Since June 2024, Kristýna has been an assistant professor at the Department of Analytical Chemistry at UCT Prague, where she is involved in elemental composition analysis using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), teaching and supervising students.
"I think if a student wants to get somewhere, they need a mentor. It's important to be able to ask and hear the opinion of someone who has been through the same thing. I didn't have that opportunity and I feel like I missed it." Kristýna is also motivated to get involved in mentoring from her experience of dealing with mental health difficulties in her studies and the opportunity to help someone get through something similar or to help them prevent such difficulties.