Medical University of Lublin

Prof. Emilia Fornal

Emilia is an analytical chemist, an expert in liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. After obtaining a doctoral degree in chemical sciences at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, she completed two postdoctoral fellowships: one-year research training at the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, and a two-year Marie Curie Industry Host Fellowship at GlaxoSmithKline Research and Development (GSK R&D), Stevenage, UK. She obtained the degree of habilitated doctor in chemical sciences in the Faculty of Chemistry at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. She completed postgraduate studies in research project management and public relations in scientific research. She participated in a series of training sessions and internship programmes under the SIMS – science infrastructure management support project (Dresden, Leipzig, Germany; Yorktown Heights, NY, USA), and in research training at the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory of Stanford University (Stanford, CA, USA). Since 2016, she has worked at the Medical University of Lublin. She is the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Biomedicine and the Head of the Department of Dietetics and Bioanalytics. She is a member of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry (ASMS), the Polish Society of Mass Spectrometry, and the Polish Chemical Society. Her research focuses on liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry applications in medicine, pharmacy and food sciences. She has extensive experience in the identification of new psychoactive substances, metabolomic and protemic analyses, and food and drug metabolism studies.

Anna Stachniuk, Ph.D.
Associate Professor

Anna is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Bioanalitics at the Medical University of  Lublin. She obtained her PhD degree in chemistry at the University of Opole, Poland. As a pre‐doctoral Marie Curie Fellow, she had an opportunity to expand her knowledge and experience working at the University of Leeds, UK. Her fields of interest involve analytical chemistry with an emphasis on the applications of liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry in biomedical, pharmaceutical, environmental and food sciences. Her research interests particularly focus on proteomics in food authenticity issues.

Piotr Sosnowski, Ph.D.
Post-doc

Piotr is an analytical chemist with theoretical and practical knowledge, as well as strong IT and technical skills. After working for over 7 years with LC and MS instruments, in both academic (University of Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences, University of Geneva) and industrial settings (Shim-Pol, Bioanalytic), he has gained confidence in running, troubleshooting and performing maintenance on analytical systems. During his Ph.D. studies in Prof. Aleksandra Misicka’ group, he was working with MALDI mass spectrometry imaging, analyzing chemical compounds distribution directly at a thin slice of tissue. As a postdoctoral fellow and later a Maître-assistant in Prof. Gérard Hopfgartner’s group, he was working on projects related to 3D printing, metabolomics, peptidomics and lipidomics. At the Medical University of Lublin, he is currently studying interactions between phenolic acids and gluten network using high-resolution mass spectrometry.

Adrian Bartoszek, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Adrian, holding a degree of Medical Doctor, currently works as an Assistant Professor in the Bioanalytics Department at the Medical University of Lublin. He obtained his Ph.D. degree at the Medical Faculty of the Medical University of Lodz, where he studied free fatty acid receptors as a pharmacological target in inflammatory bowel diseases. In 2020, he received the “Diamond Grant'” which he is currently implementing in the Department of Bioanalytics at the Medical University of Lublin. As a part of the grant, he conducts metabolomics and proteomics studies based on liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry to assess the effects induced by caffeine and topiramate, and their mutual interactions, in a model of pententrazol-induced seizures in zebrafish larvae. Adrian is also a multiple winner of the Minister of Health scholarship programme.

Agata Sumara, M.Sc.
Assistant

Agata obtained an MSc in biotechnology from the John Paul Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. She is a fourth-year PhD student at the Medical University of Lublin. Her research concentrates on pharmaceutical and food analysis. She is working on project focused on the identification of metabolomics markers for the authentication of vegetable oils and the development of new analytical methods for detecting the adulterations of oils. She has experience in operating LC/QTOF, and processing and interpreting LC/MS data. Under COST Action NutRedOx she participated in two week training on LC-MS based proteomics in University of Bergen, Norway.

Hanna Nikolaichuk, M.Sc.
Assistant

Hanna is working on a project to identify lipidomics markers to distinguish the authenticity of edible oils using LC/QTOF. Her expertise lies in separation science, especially in liquid chromatography (LC, HPTLC) coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry. Hanna broadened her knowledge of the separation techniques and methodology, including high-performance thin-layer chromatography, during her 6-month stay in the laboratory of Food Science at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. She is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in the field of chemistry focusing on the effect-directed analysis and bioprofiling of plants in the Department of Chromatography at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin.

Kacper Przykaza, M.Sc.
Assistant

Kacper obtained the M.Sc. degree (2017) in forensic chemistry at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. In 2017, he pursued an internship programme at INESC-MN (Portugal). At present, he is an Assistant in the Faculty of Biomedicine at the Medical University of Lublin. His main interests are: thin-film deposition and characteristics of solids, interactions of drugs with model membrane, biocompatibility and food analysis applying chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques.

Anna Kozub, M.Sc.
Ph.D. student

Anna is currently a Ph.D. student. She holds a M.Sc. degree in medical analytics conferred by the Medical University of Lublin. During the preparation of her thesis, she gained experience in working with liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry, implementing studies on the determination of drugs and metabolites from a matrix. Her research interests focus on food chemical composition analysis and adulteration detection using LC/MS methods.

Alicja Trzpil, M.Sc.
Junior Research and Technical Specialist

Alicja holds a M.Sc. degree in biotechnology, having graduated from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Her research interests focus on metabolomics and proteomics: food authenticity testing and adulteration detections, and in particular on detecting new heat stable specific peptides markers for various commonly-consumed animal species, using LC/MS methods.

Klaudia Szałaj, M.Sc.
Junior Research and Technical Specialist

Klaudia is at the beginning of her research and scientific path. In 2022, she defended her M.Sc. thesis in biotechnology at the John Paul II Catholic  University of Lublin. During her studies, she completed an internship programme at the Medical  Diagnostic Laboratory, gaining knowledge in performing tests using molecular (RT-PCR) and immunochromatographic methods. Currently, she broadens her knowledge and leads her interests towards mass spectrometry and LC/MS methods.

• Clinical applications
• Food composition and quality
• Food authentication
• Nutrition
• LC/MS based metabolomics
• LC/MS based peptidomics and proteinomics
• Drug analysis and toxicology
• Drug metabolism
• Endogenous metabolites
• Qualitative and quantitative analyses
• Biomarker discovery
• and other

Anyone interested in cooperation, method development and/or analyses is welcome to discuss the project scopes and timeframes. Please contact Professor Fornal directly.

Our publications can be found at the Library of Medical University of Lublin, see Department of Bioanalytics listing

Choose „publikacje” for full papers, „streszczenia” for conferences, and „inne” for other achievements (e.g. patents).

Select a year of interest ( „opracowane w latach”) and /or an author of interest ( „napisane przez obecnych pracowników”).

Then press search button „szukaj”

If none selection is made and the search ( „szukaj”) button is pressed all papers and conference presentation will be displayed.

• NCN OPUS, Metabolomic and peptidomic marker discovery of plant and animal origin food components resistant to technological processes, funded by National Science Centre, project no. 2017/25/B/NZ9/02000, 2018-2022
• NCN OPUS, Identification of lipidomic biomarkers for recognition of the autheticity of edible oils supported by DSC profiling and chemometrics, funded by National Science Centre, project no. 2018/31/B/NZ9/02762, 2019-2023

• NCN OPUS, Effect of the model bread dough supplementation with selected phenolic acids on the structure of gluten proteins, funded by National Science Centre, project no. 2019/35/B/NZ9/02854, 2020-2024
• NCN OPUS, Effect of glyphosate on the biological methane oxidation in agricultural soils, funded by National Science Centre, project no. 2021/41/B/NZ9/03130, 2022-2025
• NCBR TANGO, Development of an analyzer enabling the detection and identification of meat and edible oils species, funded by National Centre for Research and Development, project no. TANGO-IV-C/0003/2019, 2020-2023
• MEiN targeted subsidy, Mass spectrometry for precision medicine and modern pharmacy, funded by Ministry of Education and Science, project no. 7224/IA/SP/2021, 2021-2022
• MEiN Diamond Grant, Metabolomic and proteomic studies based on liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry to assess the effects of caffeine and topiramate and their interactions in a model of pentetrazol seizures in zebrafish larvae, funded by Ministry of Education and Science, project no. 0088/DIA/2020/49, 2020-2024
• MUL grant, Development of new bioanalytical methodologies using low- and high-resolution mass spectrometry for the determination of low- and high-molecular compounds, especially biomarkers, for use in medical research as well as food and nutrition sciences,funded by Medical University of Lublin, project no. DS670, 2023-2025
• MUL grant, The application of advanced analytical technologies based on mass spectrometry to the study of pharmaceuticals, food quality as well as of the pathogenesis and progression of diseases, funded by Medical University of Lublin, project no. DS472, 2019-2022

• Poznań University of Life Sciences
• Perlan Technologies sp. z o.o.
• Institute of Agrophysics PAS
• Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin
• University of Lodz
• The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
• University of Life Sciences in Lublin
• University of Rijeka

Undergraduate students

Any students interested in pursuing postgraduate research or practical term or summer training in our group should contact Professor Fornal directly.

PhD studentships 

Any students interested in pursuing postgraduate research in our group should contact Professor Fornal directly; all prospective applicants should have or expect to obtain a degree (or equivalent) in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, medicine, pharmacy or a closely related discipline; non-PL students must be able to obtain independent funding for their studies, e.g., via a government bursary. 

Postdoctoral opportunities

We welcome informal enquiries from potential postdoctoral fellows with outstanding research track records who are prepared to apply for independent research funding, e.g., from the European Union, HFSP, etc. Assistance will be given in preparing a competitive research proposal.