Jakub graduated from Edinburgh University with a first-class Masters degree in Chemistry with Industrial Experience in 2012, and earned his PhD in Chemistry from Manchester University in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Perdita Barran. During his PhD, Jakub designed and constructed a cryogenic ion mobility drift tube and coupled it to a commercial quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-ToF) mass spectrometer. The new instrument was then used to study transient states of protein unfolding. He also collaborated with the groups of Prof. Oleg Boyarkine and Prof. Thomas Rizzo (EPFL, Lausanne) on applying cold ion spectroscopy to investigate amyloidogenic peptide aggregation.

In 2016, Jakub joined the MS Research team at Waters Corporation, where he worked on the development of cutting-edge ‘Cyclic IMS’ technology. His contributions included the construction of technology demonstrators, development of new functionalities such as tandem IMS, and associated instrument control software. Jakub highlighted the utility of the new technology in a number of areas, notably to separate and characterize carbohydrate anomers and in studies of protein unfolding using multi-stage IMS experiments. Since the commercialisation of the Cyclic IMS in 2018, Jakub continues to focus on MS instrumentation design (ToF-MS, IMS, ion sources, and ion guides). In addition, Jakub also contributes to applications research on isomeric mixtures and high molecular weight ions (e.g., virus particles) using IMS, ToF and Charge Detection MS technologies.

Jakub has co-authored 26 scientific papers, is a named inventor on 11 patent applications, and his work has been cited approximately 1300 times. Jakub regularly presents at international meetings and was presiding at the IMS Special Interest Group at the Annual Conference of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry from 2018 to 2020.