Mississippi State Chemical Laboratory

Happy Halloween from the MSCL!!! 👻🎃🧟‍♂️ 🍔🤡🦇

One of the MSCL's OGs, who has been working diligently with us for 27+ years, had her last day today before sweet, sweet retirement! Jane Malley is best known around here for her reliability, her great work ethic, and her aggressive humor!! Best of luck Jane, we will miss you!! ❤️🍾👏

MSCL hosted the 2024 Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), a program offered by Mississippi State University. Dr. Erika Womack gave a presentation on Career Paths and included her own path and how she came to be the Mississippi State Chemist. After a Safety briefing from Quality Assurance Manager Dongping Jiang, the students were able to witness presentations from our various divisions including Atomic Absorption, QuEChERs, and Petroleum Analysis demonstrations/overviews! We were happy to have eager-to-learn individuals in our laboratory today!

Members of the MSCL attended the 2024 AOAC Southern Section 37th Annual Conference in Atlanta, GA. State Chemist Dr. Womack and Laboratory Manager Magan Green presented a session on Comparison of ELISA vs. HPLC-MS/MS Methods for the Evaluation of Mycotoxins in Animal Feeds.

Posters were presented by Quality Assurance Officer Monica Haque and by analysts Julie Toler and Veronica Wigginton. Door prizes were won by most (but not all😒) of the MSCL crew!

The Mississippi State Chemical Laboratory had a productive time at the 2024 LFFM Cap Grantee Meeting in Houston, TX! The Laboratory Flexible Funding Model (LFFM) program aims to elevate the standards of food safety. Through this cooperative agreement, our lab is dedicated to enhancing the capabilities in chemical food defense, human food testing, animal feed testing, and sample collection.

We had a celebration honoring Lee Ware, Jr, on 30+ years of excellent service as an Analyst at the MSCL. Lee worked diligently in many different divisions of the MSCL and has made a huge impact on our lab! We wish you the best as you enjoy your well earned retirement and we thank you for your devotion to the MSCL! We will miss your humor, advice, dedication, calm disposition, and great style! Congratulations on your retirement, Lee! 👏🎉🏖

Congratulations to our Forage Analysis team for their continued achievement of the National Forage Testing Association Certification in Chemistry and NIRS testing!! 👏👏👏

Happy Holidays from the MSCL!! We had a wonderful time celebrating together today! ❤️Even though things got a little hectic during Dirty Santa! 🫢 Congratulations to Valerie Tate, Ashley Meredith, and Christina Childers each on winning 2023 MSCL Awards!! 👏👏👏

Looking to join a welcoming and positive work environment? We’ve got great news for you; the MSCL is hiring! If you or someone you know is interested in an Office Associate Position, check out this link: https://explore.msujobs.msstate.edu/cw/en-us/job/507028/office-associate

The Mississippi State Chemical Laboratory hosted a cohort of 11 USDA Foreign Agriculture Service, Scientific Exchanges Program fellows from (Botswana, Mozambique, Nigeria, The Gambia, Tunisia, Zambia, Uganda, and Rwanda) for a 10-week research training to support harmonizing Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) regulatory regimes across the eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs) of the African Union (AU) at Mississippi State University. At the MSCL, the fellows participated in laboratory activities to extract and analyze pesticides on the gas chromatography mass spectrometer from human food and animal feed. We were proud to be a part of this and enjoyed having them! We wish them luck on their next endeavors! 🌎

MSCL Analyst Angel Phillips presented to the laboratory "LB213 Fundamentals of Regulatory Mass Spectrometry" which was based off of her training that she received during her FDA course in Arkansas. Our analysts are continuously eager to broaden their knowledge by seeking out trainings and workshops and in turn sharing with the lab their experiences! Well done, Angel!

Happy Halloween from the MSCL!! Congratulations to Christina Childers for receiving the MSCL Spooky Trophy for best dish for her Scary Spider Bake! Also congratulations to Alana Edwards for winning BEST COSTUME for her spot on costume of one of our directors, Dr. Scott Boone!! We love having fun and being festive together around here! 👻💀🎃

Dr. Erika Womack will be having a talk at the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) Symposium on October 19! Come out and have a listen!

Darren Nakamura, one of our great analysts of 9 years, is off to the next chapter of his life including a career and state change! Darren worked with environmental and inorganic analyses, including ensuring playground soil and drinking water had safe levels of lead. With all that, Darren was also the unofficial “Social Media Manager” of MSCL, though it is key to note that he has been replaced by a worthy successor.😉 He was the popcorn popping, game loving, hot sauce fella of the lab and we will miss him around here! We wish you the best of luck on this next chapter, Darren!

Today at MSCL, we listened to two presentations given by our analysts Julie Toler and John Williams. Julie, who is also a member of our Safety Team, went over proper glove usage and different types of gloves that can be used in our lab. John gave us a presentation on what he learned during "XRF and ICP Method of Analysis for Nutrients and Toxic Elements," which was a week long FDA training held in New York. Very well done!

Our Quality Assurance Manager, Dongping Jiang, presented a poster on Training Employees to Understand the Requirements of ISO/IEC 17025 this week at the AAOAC 137th Annual Meeting & Exposition in New Orleans. The MSCL takes pride in being an ISO/IEC 17025:2017 Accredited Laboratory!

Dr. Erika Womack was getting groovy with former State Chemists and MSCL personnel at the MSU DAFVM Summer Summit 2023-Disco DAWG Days of Summer today! ☮️✌️😎

Today the MSCL hosted two lab tours for the Science Scholars’ Stem Camp and for the 2023 Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), two programs offered by Mississippi State University. MSCL personnel covered laboratory safety and an overview of what the MSCL does followed by presentations in our various divisions including Atomic Absorption, QuEChERs, and Petroleum Analysis demonstrations/overviews. There were many bright minds that were eagerly willing to learn what we do here at the MSCL!

MSCL celebrated Juneteenth today by having a Heritage Potluck where we brought dishes from either our backgrounds in the form of our ancestry or from our home state! We enjoyed dishes from all over while appreciating the importance of the day!

Please take a moment to congratulate MSCL's Christina Valsamakis Childers for completing the Mississippi State University 2022-2023 Leadership Development Program! 👩‍🎓🎉👏

Dr. Erika Womack, QA Officer Monica Haque, and Analysts Darren Nakamura, Julie Toler, and John Williams represented the MSCL by presenting 3 posters at the 36th Annual Meeting of the Southern Section of the AOAC International Conference held in Atlanta, Georgia. This conference was filled with many informative sessions presented by very knowledgeable scientists and other professionals. Throughout the conference, there were chances to win prizes. Darren Nakamura won one prize! The lucky John Williams impressively managed to win 3 door prizes, and also won the final grand prize!! After the conferences concluded, an escape room to find hidden "gold" was no match for them; they successfully found the "gold" and escaped with plenty of time to spare! MSCL is comprised of inquisitive minds eager to learn and educate and who value our positive atmosphere that is so encouraging of team building!

📣IT'S OFFICIAL📣 Our Dr. Erika Womack has been confirmed by the Senate as the State Chemist of Mississippi! Get that "Interim" title outta here!✌️

Please take a moment to congratulate Dr. Womack!! 👏👏👏

What do you get when you poke at a bottle of water?..... Tap water. 😏
What do you get when you drink Tap Water? Assurance it's safe. Thanks to the MWRRI team! 👏

Few child care facilities show elevated lead in drinking water | Mississippi State University Extension Service STARKVILLE, Miss. -- A water sampling program conducted by the Mississippi State University Extension Service has encouraging initial data about lead levels in drinking water collected at child care centers around the state. Preliminary data gathered as part of the SipSafe program paint a reassuring...