Dr. van Dongen, initially trained as laboratory technician, became fascinated in the early 90s by LC-MS technology and immediately recognized its potential. As a result, he pursued his studies by obtaining a Master of Science degree at the Free University in Amsterdam (1993) in small molecule LC-MS. During his M.Sc. research he worked on the development of LC-MS methods for polar pesticides in surface water under the supervision of professor Rob Vreeken [1,2]. Subsequently William obtained his Ph.D. degree (1996) in peptide and protein Mass Spectrometry under the supervision of Professor Wigger Heerma. The main aim of his Ph.D. research was to fill in the gaps, that at that time still existed, in the understanding of the fragmentation behavior of essential sequence ions of peptides (B- and C” type ions) [3-6]. Moreover, he studied the cause of the essential changes in fragmentation pathways as a result of specific amino acid residue substitutions. Fragmentation information obtained from a large number of experiments, enabled him to answer not only “how” do peptides fragment, but also “why” do peptides fragment the way they do [7,8]. Besides these fundamental mass spectrometric studies, he also probed the capabilities of mass spectrometric methods, using the insight gained from the fundamental studies, to solve biochemical problems [9-12].
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