Saffron in Savojbolagh County, Tehran, Iran by Serpico [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
Placement summary
Hazel Stewart spent her placement at Wasatch Photonics, a spectrometer manufacturer based in Durham, North Carolina. Her placement there involved testing spectrometers for various Raman, absorbance and fluorescence applications, where the data collected was used to create a library of Raman measurements to demonstrate the suitability of working at different wavelengths depending on sample type. The data she collected during her placement will also be used in future marketing materials to demonstrate the capabilities and applications of the various instruments, where one example involves the use of absorbance in food authentication. Another aspect of the placement involved characterising instrument specifications such as limit of detection and limit of linearity. Her time and experience at Wasatch also helped the company determine what equipment and supplies would be beneficial for their future applications laboratory.
Outputs from Hazel's placement
In May 2019, the results of Hazel's research into saffron quality were published on in the Wasatch Photonics newsletter and on their website.