Staff Profiles

PhD Separation Science and Mass Spectrometry, Mississippi State University (USA); MSc Analytical Chemistry and Instrumentation, Loughborough University of Technology (UK); BSc Chemistry, University of Zambia (Zambia)

Fundamentals/applications of separation science and mass spectrometry have been my focus since I left graduate school in 1999. I have great passion to explore the behavior of ions from creation to detection for different types of analytes of interest in a vast array of mass analyzers. I envisage widening the scope of fundamentals by incorporating other instrumental methods of analysis such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), Fourier transform infra-red (FT-IR) including ab initio calculations to aid in deciphering many mysteries about the behavior of gas phase ions and applying the outcomes to real life problems. The curiosity in ion motion drives applications. Thus, I have great interest in applications in environmental, food including metabolomics, clinical, natural products etc. Recently, We have been developing methods for the determination of antiretroviral and other drugs in human fluids such as plasma for clinical analysis applications. We recently completed two collaborative projects developing methods for the determination of efavirenz in human plasma for therapeutic drug monitoring and lumefantrine in dry blood spots malaria time modulated samples from Botswana initially for TDM. Collaboratively, we are also mining for biomarkers for different diseases in order to develop simple point of care testing devices for diagnostic purposes.  We target non-invasive human samples such as saliva, urine and stool.  

(1) Mass Spectrometry (2) Separation Science (3) Electroanalytical Chemistry (4) Chemometrics (5) Applicatons of Analytical Chemistry (6) Instrumental Methods of Analysis 

Fundamental and applications of separation science and mass spectrometry .  Fundamentals i.e. from ion creation to detection and model development for retention time prediction for chromatography.  Applications of separation science and mass spectrometry to food, environmental, clinical and other matrices of human interest.

(1) Mass spectrometry (2) Separation science i.e. GC-MS and LC-MS (3) Applications to food, environmental, clinical and other matrices of human interest.

1) Sichilongo, Kwenga; Padiso, Tumelo; Turner, Queen (2020) “AMDIS-Metab R data manipulation for the geographical and floral differentiation of selected honeys from Zambia and Botswana based on volatile chemical compositions using SPME-GC-MS” European Food Research and Technology, 246:1679–1690 DOI: 10.1007/s00217-020-03523-x

2) Sichilongo, Kwenga; Kolanyane, Prince (2020) “Chloride adduct tandem mass spectrometry for the quantification of thiamphenicol and florfenicol in bovine muscle” Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, 87: Article Number: 103428 DOI: 10.1016/j.jfca.2020.103428

3)Kwenga Sichilongo, Elliott Mwando Jr., Enoch Sepako, Amos Massele (2018) “Comparison of efficiencies of selected sample extraction techniques for the analysis of selected antiretroviral drugs in human plasma using LC-MS” Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods, 89, 1-8. DOI: 10.1016/j.vascn.2017.10.001