The University Hospital

So while I am working here in Leuven, there are two main facilities that I spend time at. The main location I posted about earlier is in the very center of the city. The other location is at the University hospital known as Gasthuisberg. This location is along the outer ring to the West of the city center. The easiest way to get from point A to point B is by bike.



The problem is that Leuven is not very flat, and biking from one location to another always requires covering some sloped terrain. The picture doesn't do the slope justice, but trust me it is steep enough to work up a sweat.



Inside the facility there are some pretty state of the art mass spectrometers. The lab contains an FT-ICR MS instrument as well as two time of flight (TOF) instruments. Precautions must be taken around the FT-ICR MS because the heart of the instrument is a very strong super conducting magnet.





This 9.4 Tesla magnet could disrupt pacemakers or other small electronic devices that are brought too close, and can also do some amazing things with some pretty heavy metal objects. For example a floor buffer was lifted off the ground and propelled (attracted) into the center of this MRI magnet, which has as similar strength to the FT-ICR MS magnet.