An interview with
Dr. Divya Ramesh | Field Application Specialist
“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.”
– Dalai Lama
1) What is your role at Plasmion?
I joined Plasmion as a Field Application Specialist in January 2025. As a technical expert serving as a bridge between Clients and the RnD team, I am responsible for generating the data and providing the results needed to enable a successful sale.
2) What skills are particularly valuable for your work at Plasmion?
Being at this key position between sales and research means juggling planning, follow up and execution of a large number of demos. A clear head, good organizational skills and the ability to communicate technical information to a wide audience is of utmost importance on the sales side. On the other hand, delving deep into the years of application development experience to come up with unique ways to troubleshoot or thinking out of the box is needed for the research side.
3) What do you value most about working at Plasmion?
The thing I value most in Plasmion is the ability to constantly better oneself. I have not yet found a moment where I’m not learning new things, or encountering work related or even random conversation topics that I haven’t come across before. Everyday is an enriching and learning experience.
4) What is the most common misconception customers have about your product or service?
A prerequisite of the SICRIT® source, is an LCMS. What is meant here by an LCMS is a mass spectrometer with an atmospheric pressure inlet, which all mass spectrometers that connect to a liquid chromatography system are. However, SICRIT® is versatile, allowing us to connect any upfront chromatography system, or none. Meaning, although we need an LCMS, we are not limited to using an LC.
5) What was the most challenging situation you encountered on-site with a customer – and how did you solve it?
During a demo once, I was with a customer working on some analytes in completely unprocessed matrices. We were trying to measure the analytes directly without any sample preparation. At one point there was signal saturation and suppression, so I thought the module had to be cleaned. I fitted a new one, but there was still no change. I finally realized that the source itself was blocked, but I didn’t bring the tool to clean it. I ended up using the syringe needle instead to clean out the little bit of lint that had flown in. In the end we could measure again, and the customer could see how easy maintenance could be.
6) How often do you have to come up with creative workarounds because a standard solution doesn’t work?
There seems to be a large and growing list of ‚standard solutions‘ and I think that speaks to how creative one needs to be. There is always a slightly different solution that works for each customer when I’m on a demo. Sometimes it’s a mechanical fix, sometimes switching to a different solvent works and so on. The standard solution, therefore, is a creative solution.
7) Which technological innovation will have the greatest impact on your work in the coming years?
A miniature, portable, high resolution mass spectrometer, that can also do tandem mass spectrometry. That’d be nice and it will open doors to places currently inaccessible.
8) If you could improve one thing about the collaboration between customers and manufacturers, what would it be?
Manufacturers hold the upper hand in the technical knowledge and the access to the technology; customers hold the upper hand in access to data and in providing testimonials. Leveraging both would be a good thing to improve in the collaboration.