Other Society Task Groups

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Group

Recognizing that discrimination, racism and other forms of structural inequality are widespread issues in science, the Metabolomics Society is committed to fostering diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our organizational culture and activities. Productive, innovative and impactful scientific communities depend on a rich diversity of perspectives, backgrounds and experiences. It is essential that all members of our community feel welcome and secure and that all voices are heard and respected.

The purpose of this task group is to develop and promote strategies and best practices within the realms of racial, social, geographical, sexual and gender diversity. The DEI Task Group strategy will facilitate the Society’s mission to foster and sustain a diverse, equitable and inclusive metabolomics community.

Task Group Objectives:

  1. Collect, analyze and use data to ensure an evidence-based approach to addressing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion challenges within the Society
  2. Ensure appropriate policies and best practices that relate to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are in place within MetSoc
  3. Inform and disseminate good practice Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies and initiatives
  4. Maintain a culture within the Society that encourages and promotes Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
  5. Recognize and champion the achievements of a wide range of scientists from underrepresented groups
  6. Create opportunities for researchers from low- and middle-income countries
Millena Barros Santos
Millena Barros Santos Co-Chair
Domenica Berardi
Domenica Berardi Co-Chair
Sandi Azab
Sandi Azab
Marina Botana
Marina Botana
Breanna Dixon
Breanna Dixon
Thomas Dussarrat
Thomas Dussarrat
Marvin Nathanael Iman
Marvin Nathanael Iman
Diana Pinto
Diana Pinto
Silvia Radenkovic
Silvia Radenkovic
Candice Ulmer Holland
Candice Ulmer Holland
Laimdota Zizmare
Laimdota Zizmare

International Affiliations Task Group

The IATG facilitates contacts between the Society and regional networks across the globe. Our main role is acting as a central contact point for potential new affiliates to help with their organisation and talk through affiliation with the Society. We also organise a regional get together each international meeting and have helped with the organisation of super-networks (e.g. the pan-Pacific meeting, the European networks, etc).

View the list of International Affiliates of the Society here.

Matej Orešič Chair
María Eugenia Monge Vice-Chair

Industry Engagement Task Group (IETG)

The Industry Engagement Task Group (IETG) supports the Metabolomics Society’s mission by strengthening connections between the Society and professionals across government, industry sectors (including food, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics), academia, and contract research organizations (CROs).

Our mission is to increase industry representation within the Society by recruiting new members, encouraging industry participation at annual meetings, and fostering collaboration between sectors. We are committed to enhancing the diversity of voices and experiences within metabolomics through active industry engagement.

A key initiative within our mission is the Metabolomics Society Mentorship Program (MSMP), which connects students and early-career researchers with mentors from diverse professional backgrounds. This program aims to provide valuable insight into career opportunities and challenges across the metabolomics landscape.

Alex Buko
Alexander Buko, PhD Co-Chair
Natasa Giallourou
Natasa Giallourou Co-Chair

Society Strategy Task Group

The Society Strategy Task Group aims to develop evidence-based strategic recommendations for presentation to the Society Board of Directors. The strategic recommendations are intended to promote priority setting for the Society, establish agreement around intended outcomes, and assure the Society is working toward common goals.

Fidele Tugizimana
Fidele Tugizimana Chair
Julian Griffin
Julian Griffin
Robert Hall
Robert Hall
Justin van der Hooft
Mark Styczynski
Mark Styczynski
Krista Zanetti
Millena Barros Santos

Millena Cristina Barros-Santos

INRAE Avignon
France
Email

  • Co-Chair – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Group
  • Treasurer – EMN Committee

Native from Brazil, Millena Barros Santos is a Postdoc Researcher in France at Bordeaux Metabolome-MetaboHUB (META Team, INRAE Bordeaux Nouvelle-Aquitaine), funded by MetaboHUB, the French infrastructure in Metabolomics and Fluxomics. Her current research focuses on mass spectrometry-based metabolomics to study large plant cohorts and to elucidate associations between metabolome and agronomical traits by predictive metabolomics. She has a Ph.D. in Food and Nutrition – Food Science Area in the Food and Nutrition Graduate Program (PPGAN) at the Federal University of State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) in Brazil (CAPES scholarship). During her thesis, she had the opportunity to conduct metabolomic analyses of various food matrices through collaborations with Brazilian and international laboratories and to follow an internship with a Brazilian scholarship (FAPERJ) at INRAE, Institut SupAgro, and CIRAD in Montpellier, France. In addition, she is an active member of the Portal Metabolômica Brasil and the Réseau Francophone de Métabolomique et Fluxomique (RFMF).

Domenica Berardi

Domenica Berardi

Yale University
USA
Email

  • Co-Chair – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Group

Domenica Berardi is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Public Health at Yale University (USA) where she is using metabolomics to simultaneously analyze the effects of exposures, their changes to the endogenous metabolome and biological impact for cancer development and progression. She holds a PhD in Pharmacy and Biomedical Science from the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, UK) where her research focused on the investigation of Aging and the assessment of the metabolic changes associated with its physiological and degenerative processes. Her interest in metabolomics started during her master’s degree at the University of Pavia (Italy) where she studied the effect of Glucose and Glutamine metabolism for Breast Cancer cells proliferation and oncogene expression. This research was further explored at the Institute of Genetics and Cancer of Edinburgh (UK) through the application of LC-MS/MS technologies. In 2019 she became a member of the Metabolomics Society, which gave her the opportunity to broaden her scientific and networking skills in the field of metabolomics. She joined the EMN society with the idea of transmitting the opportunities received to the younger scientists, and supporting the scientific progression in the field of metabolomics.

Sandi Azab

Sandi Azab

McMaster University
Canada

Sandi Azab is a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. Sonia Anand in the Department of Medicine, McMaster University. Her PhD in chemical biology (supervised by Dr. Philip Britz-Mckibbin) specialized in bio-analytical chemistry, biomarker discovery and metabolomics. Sandi is also a practicing Pharmacist with certification and ongoing passion for smoking cessation support.

Sandi is interested in researching cardiometabolic disease in women and children with the help of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics in a multigenerational setting, in-utero as well as in early childhood of young boys and girls. Sandi’s previous research includes the development of novel high-throughput methods for fatty acids profiling and PFASs biomonitoring using multiplexed, non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (MSI-NACE-MS) to enable samples’ screening from large birth cohorts. Recent work also entails a comprehensive metabolomics study in peripheral artery disease patients, as well as the investigation of dietary biomarkers. Sandi highly enjoys the multidisciplinary nature of her research where epidemiology, analytical chemistry, biostatistics, bioinformatics, and metabolomics are applied to approach complex biological problems.

Hobbies:
Hiking, reading, watching sunsets and raising/taming her highly-energetic twin boys

Education

  • PhD, Chemical Biology – McMaster University Aug, 2020
  • Registered Clinical Pharmacist – Ontario College of Pharmacists     2016
  • MSc, Pharmaceutical Sciences – Alexandria University, Egypt      2010
  • BSc, Pharmaceutical Sciences – Alexandria University, Egypt       2006
  • German High School Certificate – DSB German School, Alexandria     2001
Marina Tonetti Botana

Marina Botana

Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand

Marina is a final year PhD student studying coral reef biology and lipid biochemistry at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) in collaboration with Craig Wheelock’s lab at Karolinska Institutet (Sweden). Her research mainly investigates the role of oxylipins, especially octadecanoids, for the regulation and thermal stability of the symbiotic association between corals and their algal symbionts.

Marina holds a BSc and MSc degree in Oceanography and started working with LC-MS techniques for the characterization of marine lipids during her masters. Originally from Brazil, she is passionate about diversity and integration of different research fields, and about promoting international cooperation between research groups where people learn and grow as a team. As part of the EMN, Marina is looking forward to contributing to more diversity and career opportunities in the metabolomics field.

Breanna Dixon

Breanna Dixon

University of Manchester
UK

Breanna is a BBSRC funded final-year PhD student in Infectious Diseases at the University of Manchester’s Michael Barber Centre for Collaborative Mass Spectrometry and the NIHR Centre for Precision Approaches to Combatting AMR, United Kingdom. Her research utilises mass spectrometry and machine learning to examine metabolomics signatures of antimicrobial resistance. Breanna holds a MSc in Forensic and Analytical Science from Kingston University London, United Kingdom and a BSc in both Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Neuroscience from the University of Western Australia, Australia.

Thomas Dussarrat

Thomas Dussarrat

Bielefeld University
Germany

Thomas earned a PhD in Cotutelle between the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Santiago, Chile) and Bordeaux University (Bordeaux, France). During his PhD, he applied a predictive metabolomics approach on multiple species from the Atacama Desert to uncover chemical markers of plant resilience to harsh climates and investigate the ecological and metabolic implications of plant-plant interactions in extreme lands. Currently in postdoc at Bielefeld University in Germany, his research projects combine ecology, metabolomics and machine learning to explore the ecological consequences of intraspecific chemodiversity on plant-herbivore, plant-pollinator and plant-plant interactions. His collaborations with various laboratories in Germany, Chile, France and Switzerland also enable him to study the response and adaptation of plant metabolism to (a)biotic constraints, from metabolites to chemical indices.

Marvin Nathanael Iman

Marvin Nathanael Iman

Pharma Foods International Co., Ltd.
Japan

Marvin is a research associate at Osaka University, Japan. His research explores the multidisciplinary bridging of food metabolomics and molecular epidemiology to better understand foods’ health benefits.

Diana Pinto

Diana Pinto

Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade do Porto
Portugal

Diana is currently a post-doc researcher at REQUIMTE/LAQV, Polytechnic of Porto, School of Engineering (ISEP) and concluded her Ph.D. funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in July 2024, attending the Doctoral Program in Sustainable Chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto (FCUP). She also holds an MSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences (2016) and an MSc in Quality Control (2019) from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Porto (FFUP). Her Ph.D. thesis was focused on the extraction of bioactive molecules and their validation as potential active ingredients for food and nutraceutical products by in vitro and in vivo assays towards the valorization of agro-industrial by-products. As part of her training, she enjoyed a doctoral stay at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety (INSA-UB), University of Barcelona, Spain, in 2022 where she started her journey in the metabolomics field. She has been working on targeted and untargeted metabolomic approaches coupled with data processing techniques for phytochemical characterization and analysis of complex matrices from cell-based assays and animal tissues treated with natural extracts rich in bioactive compounds.

Silvia Radenkovic

Silvia Radenkovic

University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht
the Netherlands
Email

  • Chair – EMN Committee

After earning her PhD at the Metabolomics Expertise Center, KU Leuven Faculty of Medicine, Leuven, Belgium, and Mayo Clinic (visiting), Silvia completed her research fellowship at the Mayo Clinic Department of Clinical Genomics. She was also a part of the undiagnosed disease network (UDN) Mayo Clinic metabolomics core, whose focus was to help find diagnoses for undiagnosed patients using metabolomics. Currently, she is pursuing medical training in laboratory clinical genetics at University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht, the Netherlands. Silvia’s research focuses on inborn errors of metabolism, like congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDG). Specifically, she is interested in the metabolic rewiring in CDGs focusing on the heart and brain. She holds expertise in laboratory clinical genetics, different omics techniques such as tracer metabolomics, and different disease models (e.g., patient fibroblasts, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), iPSC-derived brain organoids, iPSC-derived Cardiomyocytes, zebrafish). Finally, she is passionate about research, mentoring, teaching, and scientific communication and she is part of several initiatives for early career researchers including the EMN Metabolomics Society, Biochemical Society and Females in Mass-Spectrometry.

Candice Ulmer Holland

Candice Ulmer Holland

USDA Food Safety & Inspection Service
USA
Email

  • Society Treasurer – Board of Directors

Dr. Candice Ulmer, a native of South Carolina, graduated from the College of Charleston in 2012 with a B. S. in Chemistry and Biochemistry. While at the College of Charleston, Candice investigated the pharmaceutical photodegradation of NSAIDs using ESI-LC-MS/MS under the direction of Dr. Wendy Cory. Dr. Ulmer graduated (May 2016) with a PhD in Chemistry as a McKnight Doctoral Fellow from the University of Florida in Dr. Richard Yost’s research group. For her doctoral work, she applied UHPLC-HRMS techniques to profile the metabolome/lipidome of human cells and tissues to better understand the disease etiology of Type 1 Diabetes and melanoma skin cancer.

Dr. Ulmer’s research comprised experience with various modes of ionization (e.g., MALDI, ESI, APCI, DESI, FlowProbe, and DART). She also incorporated novel stable isotope labeling methodologies such as Isotopic Ratio Outlier Analysis (IROA) to aid in the identification of metabolites as compound identification is still considered a bottleneck in metabolomics studies.

In addition to her duties as a graduate student, she was an active researcher with the NIH-funded Southeast Center for Integrated Metabolomics (SECIM). Dr. Ulmer was a member of the Florida mass spec discussion group and the ASMS diversity committee in an effort to increase diversity at conferences and ASMS supported events.

Dr. Candice Ulmer was a NIST NRC Post-Doctoral Research Associate (June 2016 – August 2017) and was involved with multi-omic UHPLC-HRMS method development, the first lipidomics interlaboratory study, and experiments that monitored the effects of environmental exposures on human/marine life.

Dr. Ulmer was a Clinical Chemist Battelle contractor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA (National Center for Environmental Health, Division of Laboratory Sciences, Clinical Chemistry Branch). Her responsibilities included the accurate measurement of chronic disease biomarkers and the assessment of clinical analytical methods in patient care.

Laimdota Zizmare

Laimdota Zizmare

University of Tübingen
Germany

Laim is a final year PhD student in Metabolomics & Systems Medicine at the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen and University Hospital Tuebingen, Germany.

Her main research focuses on NMR spectroscopy-based metabolomics in pre-clinical and clinical immunology, neurology and oncology studies. She is also excited about metabolic imaging and MALDI-2 technology possibilities in medical research.

She obtained her Master of Science degree in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and before that, a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering at Riga Technical University, Latvia.

Find more information about the lab here.

Matej Oresic

Matej Orešič

Örebro University
Sweden

  • Secretary – Lipidomics Task Group
  • Chair – International Affiliations Task Group

Prof. Matej Orešič holds a PhD in biophysics from Cornell University (NY, USA). He is a group leader in systems medicine at the University of Turku, visiting associate professor at the Örebro University, and guest professor in lipids and nutrition at the Oil Crops Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Prof. Orešič is one of the initiators of the Nordic Metabolomics Society and currently its chair of the board. As of 2016, he is a Lifetime Honorary Fellow of the Metabolomics Society.

His main research areas are metabolomics applications in biomedical research and systems medicine. He is particularly interested in the identification of disease vulnerabilities associated with different metabolic phenotypes and the underlying mechanisms linking these vulnerabilities with the development of specific disorders or their co-morbidities, with main focus on type 1 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Prof. Orešič also initiated the popular MZmine open source project, leading to popular software for metabolomics data processing.

María Eugenia Monge

María Eugenia Monge

CIBION – CONICET Argentina Email
  • Society Secretary –Board of Directors
  • Vice-Chair – Lipidomics Task Group
  • Vice-Chair – International Affiliations Task Group
  • Co-Chair – Membership Committee

Dr. María Eugenia Monge is an Independent Researcher of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) and works at the Centro de Investigaciones en Bionanociencias (CIBION). In 2006, she obtained her Ph.D. in analytical and physical chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires. Between 2007 and 2014, she held postdoctoral positions in Italy, France, and the USA. In 2014, she was recruited by CONICET to set up a new laboratory in a new research center in Argentina.

She leads the Bioanalytical Mass Spectrometry Group and the Mass Spectrometry facility of CIBION. Her research group develops MS-based analytical methods using metabolomics and lipidomics approaches with applications in health and the environment. Her group’s initial efforts focused on clear cell renal cell carcinoma biomarker discovery and the understanding of disease physiopathology. As well, her team has contributed with pipelines for preprocessing LC-MS data for quality control procedures in untargeted metabolomics workflows. With the workflows and procedures developed in her group, she expanded into several metabolomics collaborations with numerous colleagues from Argentina and from abroad. She is co-author of >50 peer-reviewed publications.

Since 2014, she has coordinated metabolomics courses for South American students, and has participated in strengthening the Latin American scientific community through teaching in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina. Since 2021, she is a founding member of the Latin American Metabolic Profiling Society (LAMPS), and she has contributed to engage LAMPS as an international affiliate of the Metabolomics Society.

Since 2019, she has been a member of the Metabolomics Society, where she serves on the Membership Committee; and she is a member of the metabolomics quality assurance and quality control consortium (mQACC). She also served as guest editor for the journal Metabolites, and she is an editorial board member of GigaByte.

In 2022, she was awarded the Metabolomics Society Medal.

Alex Buko

Alexander Buko, PhD

VP and Sr. Analyst
Human Metabolome Technologies
Email

  • Co-Chair – Industry Engagement Task Group
Natasa Giallourou

Natasa Giallourou

PhD Metabolomics Scientist
Metabolon
Email

  • Chair – Conference Committee
  • Co-Chair – Industry Engagement Task Group
  • Advisor – EMN Committee

Natasa Giallourou, PhD, holds the position of Field Metabolomics Specialist at Metabolon, USA. In her role, she provides scientific support for metabolomics applications in the BioPharma sector. 

Prior to joining Metabolon, Natasa served as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at biobank.cy. Her research projects involved integrating metabolomic data with other omics data in population- based studies, with a focus on identifying biomarkers for complex diseases. She also worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Imperial College London, where she specialized in utilizing metabolic phenotyping to address global health challenges, particularly in the field of public health nutrition. In 2017, she obtained her PhD in Nutritional Metabolomics from the University of Reading. She holds an MSc in Nutrition and Health from Wageningen University and a BSc in Biology from the University of Leeds.

Natasa leads the Conference Committee and co-chairs the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Group of the Society. She has previously served as the Chair of the Early-career Members Network Committee which she now is an advisor to.

Fidele Tugizimana

Fidele Tugizimana

University of Johannesburg
& Omnia Group Ltd
South Africa
Email

  • Chair – Society Strategy Task Group
  • Co-Chair – Membership Committee

Originally from Rwanda (and currently living in South Africa, SA), Fidele Tugizimana holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry (University of Johannesburg, SA), After the completion of a B.Phil. degree in Philosophy (Urbaniana University, Rome), Fidele Tugizimana enrolled in a B.Sc. Biochemistry-Chemistry degree at the University of Johannesburg; and completed a M.Sc. degree in Biochemistry in 2012. He has received different non-degree purpose training in Advanced Mathematics (UNISA) and in Metabolic modelling, Pathway and Flux analyses (Wageningen University, Netherlands).

Currently, Dr. Fidele Tugizimana is a specialist scientist in the International R&D Management of the Omnia Group Ltd. SA, a research scientist and lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Johannesburg, a scientific consultant in the L.E.A.F. Pharmaceuticals LLC (USA & Rwanda). He applies metabolomics approaches in interrogating cellular biochemistry at global level, specifically in plant-environment interactions, plant biostimulants and in the natural products research. His research interests include metabolomics, host-pathogen interactions, immune response (at molecular level). Furthermore, He is involved in driving the implementation of tools and workflows developed and used in extracting information from metabolomics data, exploring 4IR technologies in metabolomics, the use of machine learning and integrated novel computational frameworks (e.g. GNPS) in mining and interpreting metabolomics spectral data.

Dr. Fidele Tugizimana was involved in setting up the metabolomics group at the University of Johannesburg. He is involved in metabolomics training in SA, and had been involved in the establishment of the Metabolomics South Africa (MSA), an affiliate to the Metabolomics Society since June 2018, and he is currently the president of MSA. Dr. Tugizimana is an author/co-author of several metabolomics papers in leading peer-reviewed international scientific journals; and he serves as a guest editor and a reviewer for scientific journals such as Metabolomics, Frontiers in Plant Science, Metabolites, Nature Communications and Scientific Reports.

Julian Griffin

Julian Griffin

University of Cambridge
UK

Dr. Griffin studied chemistry at Magdalen College, Oxford, and went on to do postgraduate research in biochemistry, gaining his DPhil from Oxford in 1999 after studying in the laboratory of Professor George Radda. Following this he held Postdoctoral posts as a Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital Fellow in Radiology, as a research associate at Imperial College London and, later, as a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge (UK). He was formally appointed as a University Lecturer (the US equivalent to an associate professor) at Cambridge University in 2007.

Dr. Griffin’s group uses a range of analytical techniques including NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (they have access to a 500 MHz NMR spectrometer, a Thermo LTQ ion trap, a Waters QTOF Ultima, a Waters Quattro Premiere triple quadrupole LCMS and two GC-MS), to follow metabolism in the brain to look at a range of disease processes. The majority of his work has centered on mouse models of disease including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and the neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses. More recently, Dr. Griffin’s group has been using a combination of animal models (mouse, rat and C.elegans) to understand the metabolic consequences of “metabolic syndrome” including type II diabetes, obesity, fatty liver disease and dyslipidaemia. His studies have attempted to cross-correlate metabolomic data with proteomics and transcriptomics to create a “systems biology” description of the consequences of pathology and genetic modulation related to the metabolic syndrome.

Robert Hall

Robert Hall

Plant Research International
Netherlands

Professor Dr. Robert D Hall gained a PhD in plant biotechnology and enzymology (Edinburgh, 1984) and has subsequently completed 30 years research experience, including 20 years project / group management experience. He moved to The Netherlands in 1987 where he currently works at Wageningen Plant Research as Deputy Business Unit Manager Bioscience. He also holds a Special Professorship in plant metabolomics at Wageningen University. He was previously Director of the Netherlands Centre of Biosystems Genomics, a Public Private partnership in plant science and was coordinator of the EU-METAPHOR project. He is co-founder of the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre and currently serves on the Supervisory Board. He (co)organised the first ever international metabolomics conference in Wageningen in 2002 and the international Metabolomics Society conference in Amsterdam in 2010. He was on the Board of the international Metabolomics Society from 2008-2014 and was the elected President (2010-2012). He was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Fellowship of the Society in 2015. He is scientific advisor / member of a number of (inter)national research committees coordinating research strategy and funding both in Europe and N. America. His primary research activities are now centred on functional genomics and developing metabolomics technologies for application in plants for both science and industry. He is on the Editorial Boards of Frontiers in Metabolomics, Molecular Biotechnology and the journal Metabolomics. He has completed nearly 200 publications of which 75% are in peer-reviewed journals and he has edited 3 books including 2 on Plant metabolomics.

Web Page

Justin Van Der Hooft

Justin Van Der Hooft

Wageningen University & Research
The Netherlands

Wageningen University & Research (WUR) (The Netherlands)

After his BSc and MSc in ‘Molecular Sciences’ in Wageningen, The Netherlands, Justin also did his PhD in Systematic Metabolite Identification and Annotation at the WUR. His PhD resulted in papers in metabolomics-oriented peer-reviewed scientific journals like Analytical Chemistry and Metabolomics. Justin also presented his work at international meetings such as the Metablomics2010 meeting in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the International Conference on Polyphenol and Health, 2011, Sitges, Spain, and the Metabomeetings in 2012, Manchester; and in 2014, London, UK.

Most importantly, he gained skills and hands-on experience in different aspects of the metabolomics pipeline: the use of mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (for metabolite annotation and identification) and data analysis of comprehensive data sets. In addition, Justin gained knowledge in plant polyphenol production and analysis and the human metabolism of ingested polyphenols. After his PhD, he held positions as a junior researcher at Plant Research International (NL), and as research associate in Glasgow (UK) at the group of Prof. Alan Crozier where he investigated the fate of (-)-epicatechin in human and rat using radioactivity monitoring, mass spectrometry, and NMR based approaches.

He then moved to Glasgow Polyomics to work with Dr Karl Burgess and Prof. Mike Barrett and different partners from Glasgow Polyomics. Justin obtained an ISSF Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust to work on method development and implementation of fragmentation approaches to enhance the metabolite annotation capacities of the high-resolution LC-MS systems focusing on small polar metabolites in urine, beer, and bacterial extracts. The fellowship resulted in three first-author papers, of which one describes the implementation of Molecular Networking to perform drug and drug metabolite screening in urine extracts.

In collaboration with Dr Simon Rogers (Computing Science, University of Glasgow, UK), Justin published a PNAS paper where topic modelling – often used in text-mining – is used for unsupervised substructure exploration in metabolomics data sets using a newly developed software tool MS2LDA. Justin has been working on metabolomics projects thereby exploiting the information-rich fragmentation data that modern mass spectrometers generate and alleviate the bottleneck of metabolite annotation and identification in untargeted metabolomics approaches. He now moved to the WUR to take up a shared Postdoc position between WUR and the group of Prof. Pieter Dorrestein at the UCSD, USA. The work will be focusing on how to combine workflows developed for genome and metabolome mining to aid in functional annotations of genes and structural annotations of metabolites.

Justin has been an active member of the Metabolomics Society for several years. He was part of the founding Early-Careers Members Network (EMN) committee and chaired the committee in the lead-up to Metabolomics2016 in Dublin. Recently, Justin joined the Board of Directors. He is part of the Strategy Task Group and the Metabolite Identification Task Group – something which is close to his heart.

Links:
LinkedIn 
Google Citations
MS2LDA tool
MAGMa tool
WUR-Bioinformatics
Pieter Dorrestein group at UCSD
Glasgow Polyomics

Mark Styczynski

Mark Styczynski

Georgia Institute of Technology
USA

Mark Styczynski is an associate professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Dr. Styczynski earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), followed by postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute. While his Ph.D. work was in computational biology and bioinformatics, his postdoctoral training was in metabolomics and molecular biology; he has maintained research efforts in both of those areas since joining Georgia Tech in 2009. Currently his group’s work is at the interface of systems and synthetic biology, with main emphases including the integration of metabolomics data into the development of metabolic models and the development of biosensors for diagnostics using synthetic biology. He is the founding president of the Metabolomics Association of North America (MANA, an international affiliate of the Metabolomics Society), and a member of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium.

The Society Strategy Task Group aims to develop evidence-based strategic recommendations for presentation to the Society Board of Directors. The strategic recommendations are intended to promote priority setting for the Society, establish agreement around intended outcomes, and assure the Society is working toward common goals. The Task Group’s first focus area was the Society’s membership; the Task Group designed, executed, and analyzed the results of the first-ever Society membership survey.

Krista Zanetti

National Cancer Institute (NIC), NIH
USA

Krista Zanetti is a Program Officer in the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program (EGRP), Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Zanetti earned her Ph.D. in Nutrition from Cornell University in 2003 and joined the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program at the NCI. During the first year of her fellowship, she earned an M.P.H. at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Zanetti then conducted primary research in the Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis in the NCI’s Center for Cancer Research from 2004 to 2010.

Since joining EGRP in 2010, Dr. Zanetti’s primary focus has been building infrastructure and capacity to support metabolomics in population-based studies. In 2014, she spearheaded collaborative efforts to establish the trans-NIH international Consortium of Metabolomics Studies (COMETS), which brings together 57 prospective cohorts from the North America, South America, Europe and Asia. COMETS allows investigators from across multiple disease phenotypes to:

  1. Leverage existing resources and data
  2. Work collectively to develop methods, tools and protocols for data harmonization and sharing, quality control and data standardization.

More recently, Dr. Zanetti collaboratively organized a meeting in 2017 that led to the establishment of the metabolomics Quality Assurance and quality Control Consortium (mQACC). mQACC’s mission is to engage the metabolomics community to communicate and promote the development, dissemination and harmonization of best QA/QC practices in untargeted metabolomics.