Bilal Ali

I graduated in Summer 2024 with an MS in Microbiology from Dr. Heather Bean’s lab. My thesis work focused on predicting 624sil retention indices using values from other stationary phase types. Our lab mainly uses the 624sil stationary phase for its polarity. Being a mid-polar stationary phase, it separates both polar and nonpolar compounds from a mixture decently well, rather than separating compounds of one polarity greatly and neglecting compounds of the opposite polarity. Our main challenge when using this stationary phase is that there is a very limited amount of published retention indices for it, making it difficult to validate our analyses. This is where my work comes in; if we could predict what a compound’s retention index on the 624sil stationary phase is, we can validate our results and determine the compound's identity by comparing the compound’s predicted value with published nonpolar retention indices.