For the 5th consecutive year, the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW) has collaborated in organising the Annual Workshop on Emerging High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry & LC-MS/MS Applications in Environmental Analysis and Food Safety, the 20th iteration of which was held in Barcelona, Spain from 7-8 October 2024.

The workshop is a venue that encourages an exchange of the latest information and ideas among scientists from academia, governmental agencies and industry to evaluate practical aspects of the usefulness of high resolution mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometric techniques for screening and quantitation of organic contaminants in the environmental and food samples. It is jointly organized by IDAEA- CSIC (Barcelona, Spain), in collaboration with CTA-RSEQ, PSIPW and the University of Almeria.

PSIPW has contributed to the workshop since its 16th iteration in 2020 by sponsoring its keynote speakers and select student participants through its Prince Sultan Water Specialist Grant Programme. This year’s keynote speaker recipients were:

Julian Campo, Desertification Research Centre, University of Valencia, Spain

"SPE and HPLC-HRMS/MS protocol for multi-residue analysis of chemicals from degraded polyester fibres"


Luigi Mondello, Professor of Analytical Chemistry, University of Messina, Italy

"Miniaturized and multidimensional chromatographic techniques coupled with mass spectrometry for food and water analysis"


Natalia Soares Quinete, Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida International University, USA

"Combining target and non-targeted approaches for PFAS characterization in recreational fisheries"

Four young researcher recipients were sponsored to participate in the workshop and share their research. They were:

Adriana Catarino, University of Évora, Portugal

“Pesticide water dynamics and prioritization: The first steps to improve water management strategies in irrigation hydro-agricultural areas”


Florencia Jesús, University of Almeria, Spain

“Determination of highly polar anionic pesticides in foods using ion chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry”


Ana González-Ruiz, Institut d’Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili (IISPV), Spain

“Comprehensive Assessment of Endocrine Disruptors: Evaluating Hair, Blood, and Urine Matrices”


Yolanda Soriano, University of Valencia

“Suspected and non-targeted analysis of environmental contaminants in water and sediments of L’Albufera Natural Park using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry”