A Conversation with Alba Álvarez-Martín

art taking shape around herliterally.Her father was a sculptor, but she didn't develop the same artistic skill.Instead, her passions leaned toward physics, math, and chemistry.Today, she's found her calling as a cultural heritage scientist at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, devising techniques to analyze aging works of art."I cannot make it," lvarez-Martn admits."But I can conserve it!"Her drive inspired her to borrow a technique from medical imaging and deploy it in her art conservation work.Last year, her team reported using matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI-MSI) to precisely map out where compounds occur in the thin cross section of a painting, a method that could be used to glean molecular details about each layer of paint that artists or previous conservators have laid down (Anal.Chem.2023, DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c03992)