Among the exact and natural sciences, modern chemistry occupies a central place. This is due to its unique participation in interpreting changes and processes and phenomena occurring in the surrounding ecosystem and/or biological (natural) systems. Modern chemistry is also the base and link between environment and ecology (green chemistry), natural and exact disciplines (geochemistry and geology, medicine and pharmacy, phytochemistry, physics and astrophysics, biology and microbiology, physiology and biochemistry, chemistry of natural products and life, chemometrics and agriculture, chemistry of food products and diabetes, toxicology or materials and process engineering), but also between economics and law. In addition to basic research, chemistry includes the development of processes for obtaining individual products and constructing tools and devices in which these processes are carried out. The link of these projects is trace chemical analysis relating to the qualitative and quantitative determination of analytes present in complex and complex mixtures-matrices. This shows that analytical chemistry occupies a central place among the natural sciences, its interdisciplinary nature, and above all, universalism in interpreting changes and phenomena occurring at the molecular and cellular levels. An important branch of modern analytical chemistry is its miniaturization, robotization, and automation. Reducing the scale and form of the analytical process leads, among others, to improved selectivity, increased resolution, and efficiency while reducing unit costs.

Microfluidic devices offer the possibility for in-the-field and point-of-care analysis provided the devices are portable, require only minimal external instrumentation and little power and are robust. In our group, we are investigating simple to operate workflows for point-of-care pathogen analysis from clinical samples in collaboration with researchers in Kenya. Furthermore, we study approaches to chemical sensing in the environment with Citizen Scientists to gather data on the level and dynamics of nutrients or pollutants within freshwater and soil samples.