January Monthly Meeting

Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh Monthly Meeting

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WHEN: Wednesday – January 15, 2014
RSVP BY: Thursday – January 9, 2014

Download Monthly Meeting Flyer
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TECHNOLOGY FORUM – 5:30PM
Peter Chapman, Carnegie Mellon University

“picoCTF: Teaching 10,000 High School Students to Hack”
In the spring of 2013 two student-lead organizations at Carnegie Mellon University, the Plaid

Parliament of Pwning and Team Osiris, designed and hosted a computer security competition for high school students called picoCTF. Unlike existing competitions, picoCTF focused primarily on offensive hacking skills presented in the form of a web-based video game to better excite students about computer science and computer security. Over the 10-day competition nearly 10,000 high school students participated across almost 2,000 teams vying for $25,000 in prizes, making picoCTF the largest hacking competition ever held. As the technical lead with experience running MOOCs, I will share how we organized, built, and ran picoCTF. Additionally, I will also discuss how we plan to build on our success to make an even larger impact on computer science education.

TECHNICAL PROGRAM – 8:15 PM
Dr. Mark Bier, Carnegie Mellon University

“Heavy Ion Mass Spectrometry — the Next Frontier”
Heavy ion mass spectrometry (HIMS) is a new frontier. Despite major

advancements due to electrospray (ES) and matrix-assisted

laser desorption ionization (MALDI) there are still high m/z limitation of these ionization methods, mass analyzers and detectors. We are developing new mass spectrometry (MS) instrumentation and methods to improve the analysis of ultra-high m/z macromolecules including complexes such viral particles, a major interest of the group. We were the first lab to weigh synthetic Head II capsid of the T7 bacteriophage HK97 at 13 MegaDa, expanded ProHead I at 17.7MegaDa, a multimeric capsid complex at 26+ MDa and the capsid of the T9 bacteriophage D3 (16.6MDa) by distinguishing between individual charge states. We are also the first lab to determine ion charge states over 50 by MALDI. These unprecedented results were accomplished using a superconducting tunnel junction (STJ) cryodetector mass spectrometer. Other heavy ion complexes that we have weighed include biomolecules such as IgM (1MDa), ferritin (900kDa), von Willebrand factor (220kDa to 1+MDa) and synthetic nanoparticles such as quantum dots (~1MDa), 5nm gold particles and most recently, multiply-charged single-walled carbon nanotubes. These remarkable results will be showcased in this seminar.