University of Aarhus

Service Engineer Dave Harris spent a week in early September at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, working in the Department of Biology, on a training visit with Gunnar Rasmussen, Laboratory Technician, who supports Organic-Geological/Biology studies for PhD students.

The lab runs a 20-20, a GSL and a CETAC autosampler and Gunnar had never really had any training on trouble shooting and other aspects of this older instruments when he started 2 years ago. Dave’s colleague James Hanson had carried out an instrument move earlier this year, at which point Gunnar realised additional training would be useful.

Dave provided training on MS, prep unit, software and applications usage, and discussed with the team how some of Sercon’s newer prep systems, like the CryoPrep, could be added to the lab set up.

Every service, installation and training visit presents its own opportunities – this time, Dave found himself giving a classroom lecture on mass spectrometry while he was there!

Travel is a necessary part of the job for our engineers, who support our customers and their instruments around the world, but Dave and his colleagues tend to make the most of the opportunities the travel brings. “Aarhus is Denmark’s second city and has a big student population – and as Gunnar pointed out, this was the King of Denmark’s old university,” explained Dave. “However, Freshers week had been the week before so there wasn’t much going on this time; I spent most of my spare time in a local Jazz bar reading my book (The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave).”