Metabolomics Society Career Medals

The International Metabolomics Society seeks to recognize the outstanding contributions of individuals to the field of metabolomics through the presentation of up to two Metabolomics Society Medals. The Metabolomics Society Medals are designed to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of Metabolomics. They are open to all Society members who meet the eligibility criteria outlined below. While research contributions are of primary importance, other contributions, including to the teaching of metabolomics and/or service to the field or the society will also be strongly considered. There will be up to two medals awarded each year in the following categories:

  • The Metabolomics Society Medal is for mid-career members of the society and is open to those members who have been awarded a PhD 10-15 years prior to the closing date for nominations in each round.
  • The President’s Award recognizes outstanding achievements in metabolomics. It is available for Society members who have been awarded a PhD no more than 5-10 years prior to the closing date prior to the closing date for nominations in each round.

Exceptions to these date ranges may be made in the case of significant interruptions to an applicant’s research career. In such a case, an explanation of the nature of the disruption should be included in the nomination. Achievement relative to opportunity will be a factor in awarding these medals. Those more than 15 years out from their PhD (including career breaks etc) would likely be more suited for nomination for a Society Fellowship.

New in 2023, medal winners will have the opportunity to give a keynote presentation during the Society conference the same year they receive the award. Conference registration, and reasonable travel & hotel expenses will be reimbursed by the Society.

Scroll down to find eligibility requirements and the 2024 nomination form.

2023 President’s Award

Mónica Cala Molina
Dr. Mónica Cala Molina Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia

2023 Metabolomics Society Medal

Caroline Johnson
Dr. Caroline Johnson Yale School of Public Health, United States

2022 President’s Award

Rachel Kelly
Dr. Rachel Kelly Harvard Medical School, Gloucester, United States

2022 Metabolomics Society Medal

María Eugenia Monge
Dr. María Eugenia Monge (CIBION) – CONICET, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

2021 President’s Award

Justin Van Der Hooft
Dr. Justin van der Hooft Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands
Candice Ulmer
Dr. Candice Ulmer Holland Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, USA

2020 President’s Award

Sastia Putri
Dr. Sastia Prama Putri Osaka University and Institut Teknologi Bandung, Osaka, Japan
Stacey Reinke
Dr. Stacey Reinke Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

2019 Metabolomics Society Medal

Darren Creek
Darren Creek Darren Creek, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

2019 President’s Award

Daniel Dias
Daniel Dias Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

Eligibility Criteria

  1. Nominees must:
    • Have been members of the Metabolomics Society for at least (1) year over the prior (3) years immediately preceding the year of award nomination.
    • Be a current member of the Society.
    • Meet the criteria for each medal listed above.
  2. More details on eligibility are provided in the FAQ document.

Application Procedure

  1. Nominations should consist of a cover letter (one page A4 max) indicating which award is being applied for and summarizing the achievements of the nominee (and any significant career interruptions, if applicable); explicit mention of the specific contribution of the nominee (50 words or less, suitable for a notice on the website); a detailed Curriculum vitae, including publications, of the nominee and support from at least 2 additional full Members in good standing and from different institutions to each other and the nominee (please include name, email and affiliation).
  2. Nominators should seek the approval of the nominee prior to submitting a nomination. Self-nomination is also acceptable.
  3. Nominators are responsible for making sure all the required paperwork is submitted by the due date.
  4. All Society members are eligible for nomination.
  5. For security reasons you will need to sign into a Google account to complete the form. If you do not have a Google Account, please contact info@metabolomicssociety.org for assistance.
  6. The deadline to submit nominations for 2024 was February 29, 2024.

Selection Criteria

Selection of awardees will be relative to opportunity and include equal weighting of one or more of the following criteria using a scoring sheet developed for the purpose

  1. Quality and impact of published work in journals of high international reputation.
  2. Excellence in teaching and training of metabolomics.
  3. Service to the metabolomics community.

Selection Procedures

  1. The recipients will be decided by ranking the applications by the Metabolomics Society Board of Directors (BOD). In the case of multiple high-quality entries and or tied voting, there will be multiple rounds of voting with the candidate with the lowest number of votes eliminated in each round until one candidate in each category remains.
  2. Where a clear decision cannot be made, the application may be sent to an external referee, usually an eminent international scientist not connected with any applicant, for adjudication.
  3. If the BOD judges that none of the nominations in either category merits an award, then one or both awards will not be made in that round.
  4. In exceptional cases (and depending on the quality of the applications received) the Society may choose to award two President’s Medals or two Society Medals, but not more than two medals may be awarded in any one year.
  5. Applications from previous years will not be “rolled over”. Nominees who are not successful in any one year will require re-nomination if they wish to try again in subsequent years.
  6. No applicant can be awarded any more than one Society Career medal but receiving a Society medal does not exclude individuals from other society awards (e.g. fellowship).
  7. Current and ex-offico members of the BOD are not eligible for this award but ex-directors who are no longer serving may be nominated I they meet the selection criteria.
  8. Awardees will be listed on the Metabolomics Society website and their details and photo(s) may be listed on social media.
  9. NEW! Medal winners will have the opportunity to give a keynote presentation during the society conference the same year they receive the award. Conference registration, and reasonable travel & hotel expenses will be reimbursed by the Society.
Mónica Cala Molina

Mónica Cala Molina

Universidad de los Andes
Colombia

Bio coming soon!

Caroline Johnson

Caroline Johnson

Yale School of Public Health
USA
Email

Dr. Caroline Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Metabolomics in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). In 2009, she graduated from Imperial College London with a PhD in Analytical Chemistry under the mentorship of Profs. Jeremy Nicholson, John Lindon and Ian Wilson, where she studied the role of reactive drug metabolites in relation to toxicity. She then held a postdoctoral appointment at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, in Dr. Frank Gonzalez’s lab and examined the biological effects of ionizing radiation and dietary exposures on human health using metabolomics. From 2012-2016 she directed the cancer metabolism efforts at the Scripps Research Center for Metabolomics with Prof. Gary Siuzdak’s lab where she was involved in the optimization of XCMS Online and METLIN technologies.

Since joining YSPH in 2016, her lab’s primary focus has been to develop metabolomics for epidemiologic and population-level analysis. The lab is also using mass spectrometry imaging approaches to better understand tissue metabolite heterogeneity and the link between metabolites and cellular pathology. The lab is currently investigating the relationship between genetic and environmental influences in women with colon cancer, and the examination of early-life exposures in pregnancy outcomes. Dr. Johnson also serves on the editorial boards for Metabolites, Toxicological Sciences and Frontiers in Immunology and Nutrition.

Rachel Kelly

Rachel Kelly

Bio coming soon!

Justin Van Der Hooft

Justin Van Der Hooft

Wageningen University & Research
The Netherlands
Email

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

Candice Ulmer

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.

Sastia Putri

Sastia Putri

Osaka University, Japan
Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia
Email

Sastia Prama Putri is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University. She received her PhD from International Center for Biotechnology, Osaka University in which she worked on the discovery of novel bioactive compounds from natural products and gained in depth techniques in analytical and organic chemistry as well as biochemistry. Her awards include “Metabolomics Australia Poster Prize” in the 9th Annual Conference of the Metabolomics Society, Glasgow, UK”, a fellowship from UNESCO and scholarships from the Japanese Government. She is currently working on “JST-NSF: Metabolomics for low carbon society” project, focusing on application of metabolomics technology for optimization of various higher alcohols for use as biofuels. She has recently written two review articles on current metabolomics: technological advances and practical applications and is currently working as an editor for a book entitled “Mass spectrometry-based metabolomics: A Practical Guide” with CRC Press, Taylor and Francis.

Since she joined a metabolomics laboratory in 2011, she has been actively promoting metabolomics to scientific communities in her home country, Indonesia. One of her endeavors resulted in the establishment of a research collaboration with the Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Research Institute. This collaboration resulted in a paper on authentication of world’s most expensive coffee, Kopi Luwak that recently gained worldwide attention and is featured including NPR USA, Science Magazine, BBC UK, RSC’s Chemistry World, USA Today, Nikkei Business Daily Japan, etc. During her PhD study, she served as the student representative for the Society of Invertebrate Pathology. She is now a part of the Metabolomics Society Strategy Task Group and is appointed as the first chair of the newly established Early Career Member Scientist Member Network (EMN) of the Metabolomics Society.

Stacey Reinke

Stacey Reinke

Edith Cowan University
Australia
Email

  • Chair – Education & Training Committee

Stacey Reinke is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Statistics and Computational Biology at Edith Cowan University (Perth, Australia). She completed her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Alberta (Canada) in 2011. Her early research investigated mitochondrial dysfunction in model systems, which expanded to investigating energy metabolism dysregulation in inflammatory diseases in her first postdoctoral position. During this time, Stacey worked closely with David Broadhurst which fostered her interest in design of experiments, statistics, and data science.

Upon receiving a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Fellowship in 2014, Stacey relocated to the Karolinska Institute (Sweden) where she worked under the mentorship of Craig Wheelock. Here, she played a key role in developing large-scale clinical metabolomics workflows for as part of the EU-wide UBIOPRED asthma project. In 2016, Stacey was recruited to Perth (Australia) as part of a state-led initiative to enhance clinical metabolomics capacity in Western Australia.

Stacey’s applied research primarily focusses on using metabolomics to investigate the underlying mechanisms of respiratory diseases. As a teaching-research scholar and biochemist turned computational biologist, Stacey is also passionate about improving data literacy for biologists. This is reflected in her methodological papers and her involvement in the Society’s Education & Training Committee.

Darren Creek

Darren Creek

Monash University
Australia
Email

Dr Darren Creek is a NHMRC CJ Martin Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne. Darren completed his PhD in pharmaceutics at Monash University in 2008, which involved applications of LCMS and spectroscopic methods to support the discovery of novel antimalarials, arterolane and OZ439. He then conducted post-doctoral research on clinical pharmacology of malaria with the University of California San Francisco and Makerere University in Uganda, and returned to Australia to investigate drug metabolism at the Centre for Drug Candidate Optimisation. On being awarded the NHMRC CJ Martin fellowship, Darren moved to Glasgow University, UK, where he played a major role in the implementation of the Scottish Metabolomics Facility. 

Darren has developed numerous analytical and bioinformatic methods to optimise outcomes from LCMS and GCMS based untargeted metabolomics studies, and his major contributions to the metabolomics field include: retention time prediction for metabolite identification, untargeted stable-isotope labelling for pathway discovery, and the user-friendly, open-source software for identification and evaluation of metabolomics data, IDEOM. His research has demonstrated the power of metabolomics for the unbiased discovery of novel enzymes, pathways and mechanisms of drug action, and he continues to develop metabolomics techniques, and apply metabolomics to parasitology, microbiology and pharmacology. Darren has over 30 peer-reviewed publications and maintains collaborations across all 6 continents that apply metabolomics to address important issues in biomedical research.

Daniel Dias

Daniel Dias

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Australia​

Bio coming soon!