Aquaphotomics Workshop I & II

Time & Date: 13:00 – 19:00 on December 2

Location: Reception Hall B

If you are planning to join the workshops, please follow the instructions in the abstracts below and download the required software beforehand.

  • Open for public lecture: Aquaphotomics introductory course (Bilingual, Japanese & English) by Roumiana Tsenkova (日本語) (English) (PowerPoint)
  • A Poor Man’s Guide to AquaPhotomics: Analysis of Variance in Near-Infrared Spectra of Water by Dusan Kojic (link)
  • Removing Interference Signal from NIR Spectra by Ali Gahkani (link) (Mat File, zipped)
  • Aquaphotomics multivariate analysis tools – aquap2 by Zoltan Kovacs & Bernhard Pollner (link)
  • Chemometric tools for aquaphotomics by Federico Marini (link)

Workshop Instructors

Roumiana Tsenkova

Kobe University, Japan
Presentation Topics

Open for public lecture: Aquaphotomics introductory course (bilingual, Japanese & English)
(ワークショップ日本語概要)
(Workshop English Abstract)
(PowerPoint)

Why Aquaphotomics? (Abstract)

Bio
Roumiana Tsenkova is professor and head of laboratory at Kobe University. Recently she proposed aquaphotomics as a new scientific field to study the collective characterization and quantification of pools of water molecules that have the same molecular vibration and hold information on structure, function, and dynamics of organisms or aqueous systems.

Dusan Kojic

Keio University, Japan
Presentation Topic

A Poor Man’s Guide to AquaPhotomics: Analysis of Variance in Near-Infrared Spectra of Water (Workshop Abstract)
Spectral Component Analysis (Abstract)
Bio
I was born on September 11th 1974. in Belgrade, Serbia. My BSc, MSc and PhD studies were completed at University of Belgrade, Serbia, from 1993 to 2011. My PhD work started with the applications of nanotechnology to medicine by using Magnetic Force Microscopy in scanning human skin histopathology samples. Simultaneously, I became involved with BioImaging applications and signal processing as a part of R&D project aimed at developing a new method called Opto-Magnetic Spectroscopy (OMS) for in vivo screening of skin-cancers and early diagnosis of melanoma. I was involved in developing a customized hardware & software solutions for automated digital acquisition and processing of CCD camera images. As a final result, I have co-authored four papers in the field of OMS, as a hardware & software engineer.

My Post-doc work started at Kobe University where I spent 3 months (during year 2011.) in the laboratory of Prof. Roumiana Tsenkova, to complete the training in a new approach to studying the structure of water called AquaPhotomics and Multivariate analysis of NIR spectra of water and water based solutions.

My recent and current work is based at Keio University, where I transitioned in second half of year 2011, after completion of training at Kobe University, and is focused around AquaPhotomics. I amd currently affiliated with Dept. of Pharmacology at Keio University, Tokyo. I started my work with characterizing intracellular and extracellular water in Chinese Hamster Ovarian (CHO) cell cultures and my work has since expanded to studies of hydration of various small molecules, as well as to AquaPhotomics of human urine.

My current research interests are focused on improving the pre-processing methods for NIR spectra, and its application onto various water based organic and inorganic solutions, with the purpose of elucidating details of quantitative characterization of hydrogen bonding in water.

Zoltan Kovacs

Szent István University, Hungary
Presentation Topic
Workshop – Aquaphotomics Data Analysis (Abstract)
Bio
habilitated PhD, associate professor at Szent Istvan University, MSc in Food Engineering (2007), PhD in Food Science (2012) and dr. habil in Food Science (2018). His original scope of research is the application and improvement of machine sensing systems, with major focus on the electronic tongue, it’s related measurement protocol and data evaluation techniques. His early works and adepts in the agricultural, food sciences and pharmaceutical fields, was noticed by the manufacturer of electronic tongue instruments, and he was invited for collaborations. He spent three years as a post-doctorate research fellow in Professor Tsenkova’s group at Kobe University, Japan. Since his post-doc period, he has been working with the near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) using the novel aquaphotomics data evaluation approach. He has also, been investigating the application of aquaphotomics for various systems including biological organisms, different types of water samples, and developing measurement and data evaluation techniques for rapid and non-invasive application of NIRS and aquaphotomics. He has won several research fellowships since he returned to his home institution in 2016. Currently Professor Kovacs collaborates and leads different national and international research projects mainly in the frame of near infrared spectroscopy, aquaphotomics and artificial senses along with their related chemometric methods.

Bernhard Pollner

Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria
Presentation Topic
Workshop – Aquaphotomics Data Analysis (Abstract)
Bio
Graduated to MD from Innsbruck Medical School in 2004 and has been involved in various fields of science since then, always with a focus on non-mainstream and unconventional topics. He works as a scientific consultant for a well known Austrian company, and one of his main interests is water resp. water in biological systems. He worked one year as a visiting scientist in the water-research laboratory of Prof. Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, followed by a stay at Kobe University, Japan, where he started working with the Aquaphotomics data-evaluation approach of near infrared spectroscopy data. He is specialized in developing and implementing data-analysis and – visualization workflows and easy to use, yet powerful near infrared spectroscopy data evaluation techniques. Currently, Dr. Pollner is a PhD-Student at the Department of Hygiene and Medical Microbiology at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria, where he studies the microbiological effects of physical treatment of water.

Federico Marini

University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy
Presentation Topic
Chemometric tools for aquaphotomics (Abstract)
Bio
Dr. Marini received his MSc from Sapienza University of Rome in 2000 where he also completed his PhD in 2004. He is currently associate professor of Chemometrics at Sapienza University of Rome. In 2006, he was awarded the Young Researcher Prize from Italian Chemical Society and in 2012 he won the Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems Award “for his achievements in chemometrics”. He has been visiting researcher in various Universities (Copenhagen, Stellenbosch, Silesia, Lille). His research activity is focused on all aspects of chemometrics, ranging from the application of existing methods to real world problems in different fields to the design and development of novel algorithms. He is author of more than 110 papers in international journals, and recently he edited and coauthored the book Chemometrics in food chemistry (Elsevier). He is member of the Editorial boards of Chemolab, Analytica Chimica Acta, J. of Chemometrics, J. of NIR Spectroscopy, J. of Spectral Imaging and he serves as Associate Editor for Chemometrics in Wiley’s Encyclopedia of Analytical Chemistry. He is currently the coordinator of the Chemometric group of the Italian Chemical Society and a member of the Chemometric study group of EUCheMS.

Ali Gahkani

Aunir, United Kingdom
Presentation Topic
Removing Interference Signal from NIR Spectra (Workshop Abstract)

Covariance Weighting in Aquaphotomics (Abstract)

Bio
Dr Ali Gahkani works as a Senior R&D Scientist for Aunir, a company specialised in developing NIR solutions.
A former Purdue University postdoctoral researcher, he has more than 15 years of research and commercial experience with different methods of vibrational spectroscopy (including Raman and Infrared spectroscopy).

He is currently focused on exploring novel machine learning and data science tools in solving complex spectroscopy problems.

Dr Gahkani has been awarded in a number of international chemometrics competitions including first place in a recent Aquaphotomics competition (Chambersburg shootout 2018).