2024 Officer Election

All members of the Metabolomics Society are welcomed and encouraged to participate in the 2024 Officer election. Voting is open now through September 25, 2024, at 11:59pm USA CST. Complete details on elections can be found here.

This webpage contains a list of nominees as well as biographies and mission statements for serving as an Officer. You can meet the candidates by clicking on each nominee below. Please take a moment to review before placing your votes.

President Nominees

There was only one candidate for President, so this role will be filled automatically by Rick Dunn.

Warwick "Rick" Dunn

Rick Dunn

Secretary Nominees

María Eugenia Monge

María Eugenia Monge

Kati Hanhineva

Kati Hanhineva

Elizabeth Want

Elizabeth Want

How To Vote:

Each member has one (1) vote. You must be a current member of the Society. If you have not signed up for membership in 2024, sign up here: 2024 Membership. Once you have activated your membership you can vote in the election.

Voting is now open through September 25, 2024, at 11:59pm USA CST.

Contact info@metabolomicssociety.org for assistance.

Warwick “Rick” Dunn

University of Liverpool
UK

Chair – Website & Communication Committee
Co-Chair – Metabolite Identification Task Group

Biography:

Rick is Professor of Analytical and Clinical Metabolomics at the University of Liverpool in the UK. He has spent the last 20 years working in metabolomics from being a technician in Sheffield to his current role in Liverpool. He has a passion for developing chromatography-mass spectrometry untargeted/targeted assays for collection of high quality data and in developing new tools (software) and resources (MS/MS and retention time libraries) for metabolite annotation/identification. He applies these to study health and disease in humans and other mammals. He is passionate about training the next generation of scientists at all levels from undergraduate to postdoctoral and to achieve this was Director of the Birmingham Metabolomics Training Centre and is Co-Director of the Liverpool Training Centre for Metabolomics; face-to-face and online training courses are operated to achieve training goals. He has significant experience of consortium, society and scientific conference management. He was a Director of the Metabolomics Society (2010-2015) where among multiple roles he was conference lead for three of the annual conferences. He was one of the organisers of a QA/QC workshop in 2017 which led to the development of mQACC where he was honoured to be the first chair of the coordinating committee. He has led the operation of two MetaboMeeting conferences in the UK and is co-chair of a Gordon Research Conference in 2025. He is also Reviews Editor for the journal Metabolomics and was awarded a Honorary Fellowship by the Metabolomics Society in 2020 for his commitment to the society and metabolite annotation. His career goals are to make metabolomics a standard resource applied in biological research and to train the next generation of metabolomics researchers.

Officer Mission Statement:

Driving metabolomics forward has been a passion of mine for 20 years, both from a scientific aspect but also in supporting the metabolomics community through conferences and workshops (e.g. Metabolomics Society, MetaboMeeting), societies (Metabolomics Society), consortia (mQACC) and training (through training centres and Society-led training opportunities). I want to lead on driving the Metabolomics Society further forward as a community both for developers and users of metabolomics but also as promoting metabolomics to other research fields. My goals as President will be (1) to ensure the Society works for every researcher across the world (through conferences, affiliates and EMN) and every researcher can contribute to the society through membership and events; (2) to ensure early career researchers or researchers new to the research area have availability of varied and appropriate training, educational and networking resources and (3) to promote open science for data sharing and to ensure use of quality and reporting standards including revised/updated Metabolomics Standards Initiative reporting guidelines. Currently as a Director I chair the Website and Communications committee and Metabolite Identification task group and sit on the conference committee and education and training committee of the Metabolomics Society.

María Eugenia Monge

CIBION – CONICET
Argentina

Vice-Chair – Lipidomics Task Group
Vice-Chair – International Affiliations Task Group
Co-Chair – Membership Committee

Biography:

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, the environment, and food science. As well, her team has contributed with pipelines for preprocessing LC-MS and direct-to-MS data for quality control procedures in untargeted metabolomics workflows. 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. Since 2019, 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.

Officer Mission Statement:

If elected as Secretary, I will work together with the President and Treasurer as well as with the other Directors of the Board on serving the Society. I will continue serving on the different committees and task groups in which I am currently involved.

Since 2022, I have served as co-chair of the Membership Committee, where we analyze demographic data of the membership to evaluate the impact of the changes in the fee structure aimed at promoting the inclusion of members from low and middle-income countries based on the World Bank Atlas. We also contributed in the organization of a virtual event for the EMN held in March 2024. Since 2023, I serve as vice-chair of LipidMet, the lipidomics Task Group of the Society, where we have had bimonthly virtual meetings alternating time zones with large attendance and fruitful discussions. As well, I have served as vice-chair of the International Affiliations Task Group of the Society, where we want to start an exchange training initiative. Since 2022, I have also served as a member of the Conference Committee.

My intended goals, if elected, include continuing my engagement with the different committees and tasks groups of the Society as well as continuing promoting the metabolomics field in the South American region. I would contribute to identify new networking opportunities across the membership and encourage new strategies to increase the number of opportunities for low and middle-income countries.

Kati Hanhineva

University of Turku
Finland

Biography:

Kati Hanhineva is professor in food development with special focus on Nordic foods and health effects at the University of Turku, Department of Life Technologies, Food Chemistry and Food Development unit since beginning of 2020. She also holds Research Director position at the School of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition at the University of Eastern Finland and is affiliated as visiting scientist (Marie Curie MoRE2020 Fellow) at the Division of Food and Nutrition Science, Department of Biology and Biological Engineering at the Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Hanhineva has completed PhD in biotechnology at the University of Kuopio 2008. During years 2008-2014 she conducted post-doctoral research at the Department of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition, at the University of Eastern Finland with several research visits to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Since 2014 she has been the principal investigator in food and nutritional metabolomics research group and led and participated in several national and EU-funded research projects including Academy of Finland Researcher Fellowship 2014-2019. Prof Hanhineva is also the founder and Chairperson of the start-up company Afekta Technologies focusing on developing and providing metabolic profiling analytics for industry and academia, especially within food and nutrition related applications.

Officer Mission Statement:

I am currently serving the second term as a Board member of the Metabolomics Society and would be happy to take the Officer responsibilities as the Secretary of the Board. My main focus areas at the Board so far have included mainly reinforcing the approaches necessitated for efficient metabolomics data analytics and formulating policies and actions to unify the downstream metabolite annotation practices that are in the focus of the MetFAIR Task Group. In addition, I have participated in the Conference and Publication Committees and have become familiar with the various Society-driven actions and events. I am aware of the duties of a secretary related to the management of documentation and voting, the responsibility of the e-mail activity, as well as active participation and commenting on the Society social media channels. Analogous activities are familiar to me from the work-life in general, and therefore I am confident that I could amend them to cover the responsibilities of the Metabolomics Society board. Therefore, I would be happy to serve as the Secretary of the Society – member of which I have been for almost two decades.

Elizabeth Want

Imperial College London
United Kingdom

Biography:

I am a Reader in Clinical Mass Spectrometry in the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction at Imperial College London. I joined Imperial in 2006 after working as a postdoctoral metabolomics researcher at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA. Prior to that, I obtained my PhD in Clinical Biochemistry from King’s College London. At Imperial College, I became Lecturer in 2007, Senior Lecturer in 2014 and Head of the Bioanalytical Chemistry Section in 2022. I am Director of the Imperial International Phenome Training Centre, which runs several popular hands-on Metabolomics courses every year.

I have >25 yrs of experience in mass spectrometry and chromatographic techniques and have spent the past 20 years working in the field of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. My research focuses on the development, optimisation and application of novel liquid chromatography – mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based methodologies for metabolomics. I aim to improve molecular assays for clinical studies, leading to deeper understanding of diseases, improved healthcare and better patient outcomes. I have applied these assays to the analysis of various biological samples, in biomedical areas including cardiovascular disease, glioblastoma, burn injury and pregnancy.

I also have a strong interest in teaching and training. I have been the Deputy Director of the MRes in Biomedical Research at Imperial College since 2018. I have mentored multiple BSc, Master’s, Doctoral students and Postdoctoral students. I have also enjoyed designing and giving metabolomics courses at International Conferences (ASMS, MSACL). I am active in the International MSACL committee and am Chair of the London Metabolomics Network.

Officer Mission Statement:

I am very active in the Metabolomics Community, and enthusiastic about training the next generation of researchers. I am already part of the Metabolomics Society Education and Training Committee and through the MAP-UK consortium have been involved in Metabolomics training and outreach over the past few years. One of my goals as Director would be to continue the important work of the Metabolomics Society in encouraging Metabolomics early career researchers. I would leverage my Industry connections to further sponsor travel grants and prizes for ECRs to attend conferences and encourage them to participate in ECR activities.

I enjoy conference organisation, having been involved in planning both MSACL (Mass Spectrometry: Advances in the Clinical Laboratory) EU and US conferences, and the UK-based Reid Bioanalytical Forum and London Metabolomics Network Meetings. This year I have co-organised the Frontiers in Metabolomics Conference in Colorado, USA which brought together many Metabolomics researchers from across the world. I would therefore be keen to play an active part in the Conference Committee.

As part of the Metabolomics and mass spectrometry communities for many years, I would hope to use my expertise in terms of following the Mission of the Metabolomics Society, e.g. promoting the field of metabolomics through national and international talks and chairing conference sessions. Through the Education and Training Committee I will help with the creation of new outreach activities and workshops to promote metabolomics.

Due to my research interests, I would also be happy to be on several Task Groups, such as Lipidomics, Metabolite Identification and Precision Medicine.

In summary, if elected as Secretary of the Metabolomics Society, I believe I can bring enthusiasm and experience to the role.