Metabolomics SocietyMetabolomics SocietyMetabolomics Society
It has been well document that there is a reproducibility crisis in science in general. Closer to home, there are areas of ambiguity within the data analysis pipeline for metabolomics. This is often not deliberate and can be, but not limited to, a lack of transparency in the reporting of the data analysis process, or the employment of push-button ‘black box’ automated approaches, compounded with a lack of user knowledge.
The Metabolomics Society has therefore started this task group to help establish best practice and recommendations for what needs to be reported in order to ensure reproducibility of metabolomics data analysis science. We believe this will have a positive impact and improve data analysis practices more broadly.
Chair
Co-Chair
Data Standards Task Group aims to foster and coordinate efforts in enabling efficient data formats for storage, exchange and verification of information within metabolomics datasets. The Data Standards Task Group will engage with producers or users of data formats such as; database providers, software engineers and instrument vendors working towards standardization and agreements set by metabolomics MSI, HUPO-PSI, COSMOS and other similar community-wide accepted initiatives. We actively work on open-data standards formats and its compliance with minimum information guidelines.
Chair
The Metabolite Identification task group is working with the community to build consensus on metabolite identification reporting standards, to educate the community on best practices and current tools and resources and to provide the opportunity for inter-laboratory comparisons. The objectives are:
Co-Chair
Co-Chair
The Metabolomic Epidemiology task group has outlined the objectives that will support its mission to promote the growth and understanding of metabolomic epidemiology as an independent research discipline. These objectives are:
Chair
The Computational Mass Spectrometry task group represents the Metabolomics interests in the www.CompMS.org initiative, which promotes the efficient, high quality analysis of mass spectrometry data with state-of-the art computational tools and algorithms through dissemination and training in existing, and coordination of new, innovative approaches. The CompMS initiative aims to exploit synergies between different application domains, in particular proteomics and metabolomics. The scientific remit of the group will include all aspects of computational method development from signal processing, feature alignment and grouping, to development of metabolite identification algorithms and metabolic network reconstruction. For discussions and announcements, please join www.metabolomics-forum.com/index.php?board=87.0. Members from the CompMS community participating in the Task Group are: Corey Broeckling, David Grant, Emma Schymanski, Etienne Thevenot, Federico Taverna, Jermaine Goveia, Johannes Rainer, Kris Morreel, Lee Ferguson, Michael Witting, Ming Wang, Nicola Zamboni, Pieter Dorrestein, Rainer Breitling, Shawez Khan, Simon Rogers, Tomas Pluskal.
Co-Chair
Co-Chair
The remit of this newly forming Task Group is to leverage upon the critical mass of research activity that surrounds established model organisms, i.e., to focus metabolite identification efforts on the identification of Model Organism Metabolomes (MOMs). Such activity would complement the work conducted by the Metabolite Identification Task Group, and parallels the approach used by the proteomics community, specifically HUPO and their Initiative on Model Organism Proteomes (iMOP). We aim to (1) integrate disparate model organism-focused research groups into a Model Organism Metabolomes community and promote interactions between these groups; (2) share, discuss and coordinate analytical and bioinformatics strategies to progress the annotation and identification of Model Organism Metabolomes (including polar metabolites and lipids), ideally resulting in best practice strategies. This will be achieved through targeted publications, dissemination of information through MetaboNews, and a discussion group on the Metabolomics Society’s new Metabolomics Forum.
Co-Chair
Co-Chair
Co-Chair
The Precision Medicine and Pharmacometabolomics Task Group seeks to catalyze the engagement of our metabolomics community in global initiatives in precision medicine. We will create communication channels to facilitate the incorporation of metabolomics data as a compliment to genomics data in informing about disease heterogeneity and treatment outcomes. We seek to facilitate advancements in the field of Pharmacometabolomics and as enabling tool for Precision Medicine.
Chair
Roy is Professor of Biological Chemistry in the Department of Biochemistry and Systems Biology within the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology (ISMIB) at the University of Liverpool and a director of the Centre for Metabolomics Research.
Roy helped to develop and establish long-term metabolomics which allows fusion of GC-MS and LC-MS data. These approaches have been used by his team and collaborators to profile (e.g.) health human populations and investigate the frailty phenotype during the ageing process. In parallel, in order to understand metabolic flux on a single cell level for bacterial community analysis, his group are currently developing high spatial resolution photothermal infrared and Raman-based imaging methods.
Roy is a Founder and Director of the Metabolomics Society (2005–15) and is very happy to serve on the Board of Directors again. He is also a Director of the Metabolic Profiling Forum. Roy is a Committee member of Royal Society of Chemistry’s Analytical Division Council (ADC) and is a Trustee of the Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund.
Professor David Broadhurst (www.davidbroadhurst.net), born Chester UK, holds a first class honours degree in Electronic Engineering, an MSc in Medical Informatics, and a PhD on the subject of ‘‘Application of Artificial Neural Networks and Evolutionary Algorithms to Metabolic Profiling’’. He has been an active member of the metabolomics community for the last 18 years, where he is a recognized expert in design of experiments, signal processing, biostatistics, and machine learning. David worked for an extended period as a post-doctoral research fellow developing large-scale clinical metabolomics protocols alongside Dr. Warrick Dunn, at the University of Manchester as part of Professor Douglas Kell’s Bioanalytical Sciences Group. In 2009 he moved to Cork University Maternity Hospital, Ireland, to investigate pre-symptomatic metabolite biomarkers predictive of major pregnancy diseases. In 2011 David was appointed Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Alberta, Canada, where he was scientific lead for a range of basic/clinical metabolomics projects, and continued his pregnancy related research. More recently he has expanded his research portfolio to a diverse range of post-genomic translational/precision medicine projects. In March 2016 he was appointed to his current position as Professor at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia. In addition to many collaborative Systems Biology projects. His current research primarily focuses the application and optimization of diverse multivariate modelling techniques (parametric & non-parametric linear models, decision trees, machine learning, Structural Equation Modelling, Multilevel random-effects models, etc.) within the domain of systems-biology. Additionally, he has research interests in data visualization, design of experiments, and developing quality assurance procedures for ‘omic based studies. David travels extensively around the globe lecturing on the perils of poor experimental design and importance of robust and diverse statistical analysis.
I got my PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from University College London, UK. I started working in the field of metabolomics in University of Cambridge, overtime moving from lab experimental settings towards data analysis and data handling. In the past, I have worked as scientific investigator at the Medical Research Council, Cambridge UK. In 2012, I joined EMBL-EBI and currently work as the Scientific Coordinator. At EMBL-EBI we host the MetaboLights (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/metabolights/), the first general purpose repository for metabolomics data. For me, open access data sharing is of paramount importance to the metabolomics community growth, enabling us to move a step closer to the result reproducibility, a key objective for any scientific field. Here metabolomics standards can play a vital role (http://www.metabolomics-msi.org) having the opportunity to manage and coordinate a large EU infrastructure project on metabolomics data standards, COSMOS (Coordination of Standards in Metabolomics – http://cosmos-fp7.eu/) , it has re-ignited standards effort within community leaders, in a more bottom-up approach. Such efforts combined with data sharing in MetaboLights, I believe would benefit the community substantially. Professionally, I’m member of the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre, Cambridge Neuroscience and Cambridge Cancer Centre. I’m the main organizer of the “EMBO Practical Course on Metabolomics Bioinformatics for Life Scientists 2012 – 2016″ giving me the opportunity to work with group of talented and excellent instructors/tutors in metabolomics that share the same passion for metabolomics data handling. I’m also associate Editor for Frontiers Metabolomics Journal.
My role as the chair of data standards task group would be to work with leaders in this area, both from metabolomics and proteomics communities as well as industry, to establish and promote community wide agreed standards, in a more practical approach rather that just statements, focusing on data standards formats first.
Working together with Jan Stanstrup, we hope to merge and revitalise the metabolomics forum, and bring society activities to public domain discussions, for better engagement with society members and general metabolomics community. Please join us and share your thoughts and expertise with us.
http://www.metabolomics-forum.com/viewforum.php?uid=535&f=37&start=0
Senior Lecturer
Department of Surgery & Cancer
Imperial College London
South Kensington Campus
London
SW7 2AZ
http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/people/t.ebbels/
Tim Ebbels obtained his PhD in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge and in 1998 moved into bioinformatics via postdoctoral work at Imperial College in the metabolic profiling group of Prof Jeremy Nicholson. He was a key post-doctoral member of the Consortium for Metabonomic Toxicology (COMET), a large academic-industry collaboration which developed expert systems for predicting adverse effects in pre-clinical toxicity studies via metabolic profiling. In 2003 he joined Prof David Jones’ group at University College London to work on modelling and visualisation of transcriptomic data. In 2005 he returned to a faculty position at Imperial, within one of the world’s largest metabolomics departments. His group focuses on the application of bioinformatic, machine learning and chemometric techniques to post-genomic data, with a particular emphasis on metabolic profiles. He is involved in projects ranging from ecotoxicology, through molecular epidemiology, to the development of in vitro omics platforms to predict carcinogenicity. Much work focuses on detailed modelling of the analytical technologies used to obtain metabolic profiles, but his group is also addressing problems of data integration, visualisation and time series analysis.
Steffen Neumann studied computer science and bioinformatics at Bielefeld University, and now his group focuses on the development of tools and databases for metabolomics and computational mass spectrometry. The group develops algorithms for data processing of metabolite profiling experiments, which are available in several Open Source Bioconductor packages, and addresses the identification of unknowns in mass spectrometry data. The IPB is member of the MassBank consortium and operated the first MassBank server in Europe. The MetFrag and MetFusion tools allow the identification of compounds where no reference spectra are available.
National Institute of Genetics / Team Leader
RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science
With PhD. in Information Science, MA started his career as a termed researcher at Electrotechnical Laboratory (Tsukuba, Japan). Soon he moved to Computational Biology Research Center of AIST (Japan) as its starting member in 2001, and was later appointed as Associate Professor of Computational Biology Department, The University of Tokyo in 2003. Around this time he started to work on plant metabolomics with Prof. Kazuki Saito and joined RIKEN in 2007. Currently he is Professor at National Institute of Genetics (Mishima, Japan) and Team Leader at Center for Sustainable Resource Science, RIKEN.
Professor in Metabolomics
Director of NERC Environmental Metabolomics Facility
School of Biosciences
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, B15 2TT, U.K.
Tel: +44 (0)121 414-2219
Mark R. Viant is a Professor of Metabolomics in the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham, UK. He also serves as the Director of the Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) Environmental Metabolomics Facility at Birmingham. Prof. Viant received his BSc in Chemistry and PhD in Chemical Physics at the University of Southampton, UK. Following postdoctoral research in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, he shifted his research interests into environmental toxicology, conducting further postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Davis. In 2003 he was awarded a NERC Advanced Fellowship and relocated to the University of Birmingham, where his research team now focuses on the development and application of both NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry in environmental metabolomics, specifically as tools for chemical risk assessment and environmental monitoring. His primary research interests include the molecular characterisation and understanding of stress responses in aquatic organisms, in particular to environmental pollution. In addition his team develops novel analytical and bioinformatic approaches for metabolomics. He has authored over 90 publications, including pioneering applications of metabolomics to environmental health issues in aquatic organisms.
I am a senior lecturer in analytical chemistry at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. I obtained my PhD from Imperial College London in 2005, and was a postdoc at the University of Cambridge until 2009. I then worked as a lecturer at the University of Durham before moving to RMIT in 2012. I am currently president of the Australian and New Zealand Metabolomics Network – the first international affiliate of the metabolomics society (for which I write a newsletter sent weekly to almost 300 people). I am a member of the Metabolomics Society Data Standards task group as well as co-president of Proteomics and Metabolomics Victoria, secretary and board member of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance, a CI at the Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science and a member the Australian Academy of Science, National Committee for Chemistry. I am also a deputy director of the RMIT Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Remediation. I have been an invited speaker at several conferences and have helped organise many others (I am a member of the organising committee of the 2017 Metabolomics Conference). Aside from metabolomics my group conducts research in analytical methods and technologies, particularly in multidimensional chromatography and NMR. I have 63 publications with a total of over 2700 citations and an h-index of 21.
Dr. Fidele Tugizimana –
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.
Prof. Dr. Christoph Steinbeck
Analytical Chemistry – Cheminformatics and Chemometrics Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry Friedrich-Schiller-University Lessingstr. 8, D-07743 Jena, Germany
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6966-0814
Christoph Steinbeck was born in Neuwied in 1966. He studied Chemistry at the University of Bonn, where he received his diploma and doctoral degree at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, working on methods for computer assisted structure elucidation. In 1996, he joined the group of Prof. Clemens Richert at Tufts University in Boston, MA, USA, where he worked in the area of biomolecular NMR on the 3D structure elucidation of peptide-nucleic acid conjugates. In 1997 Christoph Steinbeck became head of the Structural Chemo- and Bioinformatics Workgroup at the newly founded Max-Planck-Institute of Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany. In 2002 he moved to Cologne University Bioinformatics Center (CUBIC) as head of the Research Group for Molecular Informatics. In 2003 Christoph Steinbeck received his Habilitation in Organic Chemistry from Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany. From 2008 to 2016, he was Head of Cheminformatics and Metabolism at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Hinxton, Cambridge, UK. During this time, his group developed open Chemistry databases for the biosciences, such as ChEBI, the dictionary and ontology of Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, and the MetaboLights database, a repository and reference database for Metabolomics.
Today, Christoph Steinbeck is Professor for Analytical Chemistry, Cheminformatics and Chemometrics at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany. The Steinbeck group’s research is dedicated to computational metabolomics and natural products research, the elucidation of metabolomes by means of computer-assisted structure elucidation and other prediction methods and algorithm development in cheminformatics. The group further helps developing a number of the leading open source software packages in Chemo- and Bioinformatics, including the Chemistry Development Kit (CDK), which was co-founded by Christoph Steinbeck
Christoph Steinbeck is also leading the European e-infrastructure project PhenoMeNal on large scale computing with human metabolic phenotyping data.
Over the course of his career, Christoph Steinbeck was founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cheminformatics, a director of the Metabolomics Society, chairman of the Computers-Information-Chemistry (CIC) division of the German Chemical Society, and established the German Conference on Cheminformatics. Christoph is a lifetime member of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists (WATOC), a member of the Metabolomics Society, the German Chemical Society, as well as of various editorial boards and committees.
Dr. Nils Hoffmann
Leibniz-Institut für Analytische Wissenschaften – ISAS – e.V.
Otto-Hahn-Straße 6b
44227 Dortmund, Germany
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6540-6875
Nils Hoffmann studied Computer Science in the natural sciences with a focus on data mining, machine learning, and organic, as well as theoretical chemistry at Bielefeld University. In 2006 he spent a six months student internship at the computer chemistry center (CCC) at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in the group of Prof. Johann Gasteiger. He received his diploma in 2007 from Bielefeld University and started his PhD on computational methods for the analysis of GC-MS and GCxGC-MS metabolomics data as a staff scientist in the group of Prof. Jens Stoye. After finishing his PhD magna cum laude in 2014, he joined German AI pioneer Empolis Information Management GmbH in Bielefeld as a solution engineer and later worked as an instructor and technical project manager for semantic search applications.
Since June 2017, Nils Hoffmann is a PostDoc in Bioinformatics for Lipidomics within the de.NBI/LIFS project at ISAS (Dortmund, Germany) in the group of Dr. Robert Ahrends.
Professor in Analytical and Clinical Metabolomics
School of Biosciences
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, B15 2TT, U.K.
Prof. Warwick (Rick) Dunn obtained a BSc (Hons) degree in Chemistry with Analytical Chemistry and Toxicology at The University of Hull followed by a PhD at BP Chemicals and The University of Hull focused on the placement of mass spectrometers on industrial chemical process plants. He has developed a passion for academic life and from 2003-2012 he worked at The University of Manchester, first as a post-doctoral researcher with Professor Douglas Kell and then as a Lecturer in Metabolomics. He moved to the University of Birmingham in early 2013 and is currently a Professor in Metabolomics, Director of Mass Spectrometry in Phenome Centre Birmingham and Director of the Birmingham Metabolomics Training Centre. Warwick has performed metabolomics research for 19 years and has concentrated his research on analytical and software tool development and their application in untargeted and targeted assays. He has a passion for maximising metabolite annotation in untargeted studies and has developed tools for conversion of m/z to putative metabolite annotations (PUTMEDID_LCMS) and in optimal acquisition of MS/MS data. Away from development work he focuses on the study of metabolism during human ageing and in human diseases to understand pathophysiological mechanisms and identify prognostic or diagnostic biomarkers for stratified medicine. Warwick is currently Associate Editor (Reviews) for the journal Metabolomics and is a past-director of the Metabolomics Society (2010-2015). Warwick has published greater than 120 peer-reviewed papers (>12,500 citations) and 6 book chapters.
Lloyd W. Sumner, Ph.D.
Professor of Biochemistry
Director, MU Metabolomics Center
240d Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center
1201 Rollins Street
Columbia, MO 65211
Office: 573-882-5486
Center: 573-882-5596
Web: metabolomics.missouri.edu
Dr. Sumner acquired his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics in 1989 from Cameron University in Lawton, OK, USA and a PhD. in analytical chemistry focused on mass Spectrometry in 1993 from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, OK, USA. He then joined Texas A&M University, College Station TX, where he was the Director of the Mass Spectrometry Applications Laboratory and where he later served as the cofounder and Associate Director of the TAMU Laboratory for Biological Mass Spectrometry with Prof. David H Russell. He joined The Noble Foundation in 1999 and rose to the rank of Professor within the Plant Biology Division. Dr. Sumner relocated to the University of Missouri, Columbia in January 2016 as a Professor in the Biochemistry Department and Director of the new University of Missouri Metabolomics Center. Dr. Sumner’s research is focused on the development, integration and application of large-scale biochemical profiling of plant metabolites, proteins, and transcripts (metabolomics, proteomics and transcriptomics) for the discovery and characterization of the molecular and biochemical components related to plant natural products/specialized metabolites biosynthesis. He also applies these integrated omics technologies for greater insight into the physiological and biochemical consequences of gene expression and system responses to genetic and environmental perturbations. In the process, he has published approximately 135 peer reviewed articles and book chapters; many with leading national and international collaborators. Dr. Sumner’s research is or has been supported by the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, NSF 2010, NSF Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, NSF Major Research Instrumentation program, NSF-JST joint Metabolomics for a Low Carbon Society, NSF Integrative Organismal Systems, and The Oklahoma Commission for the Advancement of Science and Technology. Dr. Sumner is currently a Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science; President of the Phytochemical Society of North America (2014-2017), former Treasurer (2010-2012) and President (2008-2010) of the Metabolomics Society; 2013 Lifetime Honorary Fellow of the Metabolomics Society; Co-founding Member of the International Advisory Committee for Plant Metabolomics; Principal investigator of a new Plant, Algae, and Microbial Metabolomics Research Coordination Network (PAMM-NET), and a 2007 Distinguished Alumni of Cameron University. Dr. Sumner has served as a Managing Editor for Plant Physiology, Front Pages Co-Editor and Editorial Board member for the journal Metabolomics, Associate Editor of Frontiers in Plant Metabolism and Chemical Diversity, and review Editor for several plant and metabolomics related Frontiers journals.
Theodore Alexandrov received a PhD in mathematics in Russia in 2007 and did a postdoc at the University of Bremen, Germany, where he became a group leader at the Center for Industrial Mathematics and the head of MALDI Imaging Lab. In 2010-2015, he was a visiting researcher at University of California San Diego (UCSD), mainly at the Dorrestein lab, Skaggs School of Pharmacy. He is a co-founder and since 2012 the scientific director of the company SCiLS GmbH, Germany. Since 2014, he is a team leader at European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, with a research program on spatial metabolomics and the head of the EMBL Metabolomics Core Facility. Since 2015 he is an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy, UCSD. He is also the coordinator of the European Horizon2020 project METASPACE aiming to create metabolite annotation engine for imaging mass spectrometry (2015-2018). The Alexandrov team at EMBL develops novel tools of computational biology that reveal spatial organization of metabolic processes by exploiting high-throughput metabolic imaging and by translating the generated big data into molecular knowledge.
Lecturer
Drug Delivery, Disposition and Dynamics
Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Monash University, Parkville Campus
381 Royal Parade, Parkville, Vic, 3052
Australia
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.
Jeremy Everett is the Professor of Pharmaceutical Technologies at the University of Greenwich UK. In addition, he is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College and at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he is also a Scientific Consultant and Acting Director of the Singapore Phenome Centre.
He previously held a variety of global drug discovery technology leadership positions for Pfizer, and before that, SmithKline Beecham, including responsibility for drug target analysis, drug design, drug lead generation, analytical sciences, biobanking, screening file management, high throughput screening (HTS), and structural biology. He is a consultant on drug discovery to both large pharma and small research institutes, and also consults on pharmaceutical patent litigation.
Jeremy conducts research in metabonomics and pharmaco-metabonomics, in which he has worked for over 30 years, including co-naming and defining both areas. He is a co-discoverer of pharmacometabonomics in animals and humans. Current work is focused on genotype – metabotype correlations in the areas of colorectal cancer, obesity and diabetes in collaborations with Horizon Discovery, UK and University College, London respectively.
Jeremy received both his BSc and PhD in chemistry from Nottingham University, UK. He did post-doctoral studies at McMaster University and at McGill University in Canada.
Jeremy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Chartered Chemist, a Member of the American Chemical Society, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is an author or co-author on 95 peer-reviewed publications and several patents, with over 3,600 citations to date and an h-index of 25. He has delivered over 60 invited lectures.
Associate Professor
Molecular and Cellular Biology (College of Biological Sciences)
UC Davis Genome Center
1315 GBSF
University of California, Davis, CA 95616
Dr. Fiehn obtained his MSc in Analytical Sciences in 1993 from the Free University Berlin and then received his PhD in 1997 at the Technical University of Berlin in Analytical Chemistry. From 1998-1999 Dr. Feihn started out as an associate research scientist in metabolomics at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam. He later became a group leader from 2000-2004. Dr. Feihn joined the faculty at the University of California at Davis in 2004 as an associate professor with the department of Molecular & Cellular Biology at UC Davis. He is also a member of the Metabolomics Society and the American Society for Mass Spectrometry.
Lecturer,
Department of Biochemistry
University of Cambridge
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.
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 postions 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 (http://gnps.ucsd.edu/) 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 profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/justin-van-der-hooft/35/a93/9aa
Google Citations: https://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=zv9seLwAAAAJ&hl=en
MS2LDA tool: http://www.ms2lda.org
MAGMa tool: https://www.emetabolomics.org/
WUR-Bioinformatics: http://www.wur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Chair-groups/Plant-Sciences/Bioinformatics.htm
Pieter Dorrestein group at UCSD: http://dorresteinlab.ucsd.edu/Dorrestein_Lab/Research.html
Glasgow Polyomics: http://www.polyomics.gla.ac.uk/
C. Junot is a doctor of Pharmacy. After having gained a PhD in Analytical Chemistry in 2000 (Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris), he joined GlaxoSmithKline laboratories and developed experience in the field of pharmacokinetics and metabolism applied to drug discovery for 2 years. Since 2002, he works at the Life Science Division of CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique) where he develops mass spectrometry based analytical methodologies for metabolome analysis in the fields of medicine and microbiology. C. Junot has been appointed as head of the Laboratory for Drug Metabolism Studies since September 2010. He is the deputy coordinator of the French MetaboHUB infrastructure for metabolomics and fluxomics and also in charge of the coordination of analytical chemistry developments in this infrastructure.
HighChem
Čajakova 18
Bratislava
Slovakia
81105
Robert Mistrik (46), HighChem, Slovakia, has a Masters degree in chemistry from the Slovak Technical University, Bratislava, Slovakia and a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, Austria. He held a postdoctoral position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD, USA. He is the creator of Mass Frontier, a software for processing and interpreting mass spectral data in which the spectral tree concept was introduced. He is the author of precursor ion fingerprinting method that allows identification of metabolites based on substructural identities of tandem mass spectra. In 2009, he was awarded the Head of the Year prize, a national award for exceptional achievements in science and technology. Dr. Mistrik has been a member of the scientific steering committee of the METAcancer consortium, aiming to identify small molecule biomarkers in breast cancer tissue. Currently, he is leading the m/z Cloud initiative that is a collaborative effort to build a comprehensive spectral trees library for identification of metabolic components utilizing molecular evolutionary patterns.
Steffen Neumann studied computer science and bioinformatics at Bielefeld University, and now his group focuses on the development of tools and databases for metabolomics and computational mass spectrometry. The group develops algorithms for data processing of metabolite profiling experiments, which are available in several Open Source Bioconductor packages, and addresses the identification of unknowns in mass spectrometry data. The IPB is member of the MassBank consortium and operated the first MassBank server in Europe. The MetFrag and MetFusion tools allow the identification of compounds where no reference spectra are available.
Dr. Emma Schymanski is a research Scientist at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology. Her research interests lie in the suspect and non-target screening of environmental contaminants, primarily with LC-HRMS/MS, but also GC-MS and applying structure generation to the identification of “unknowns”. The contribution of mass spectra to open spectral libraries is an essential part of her work and she is an active member of the MassBank consortium, developing RMassBank in a team. She also works on optimizing compound database search strategies for candidate selection and how to communicate the confidence of high-throughput identification results, currently applying these in the SOLUTIONS EU project (http://www.solutions-project.eu/) for emerging and future contaminants. Together with Steffen Neumann she founded the CASMI contest for small molecule identification in 2012, now into the fourth round. She is an active member of the Metabolite Identification and Computational Mass Spectrometry Task Groups of the Metabolomics Society. Find out more on her Eawag website or Google Scholar.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA
Dr. Lasky-Su is an Associate Professor in Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She earned her doctoral degree in Genetic Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health and has spent the last 20 years focusing on the identification of genetic, genomic, and metabolomic determinants for complex diseases. The accumulation of these efforts has resulted in over 150 peer-reviewed original research manuscripts. Dr. Lasky-Su’s more recent work has focused on analytic and network approaches to integrate metabolomics and other omics data types with the end goal of making strides towards precision medicine. She is currently the principal investigator and co-investigator on many grants focused on the integration of metabolomics and other omics data types for several diseases including asthma, allergies, preeclampsia, macular degeneration, cancer, and several other complex diseases. Dr. Lasky-Su currently serves in leadership capacities in a variety of consortiums, including acting as the chairman of the Consortium of METabolomic Studies (COMETS) and a scientific advisor to the “Metabolomics Workbench.” Through these efforts, she has worked to facilitate the utilization of metabolomics in large population-based cohorts. Her long-term goals are to continue to promote metabolomics research among the epidemiological community through the establishment of solid statistical approaches, the harmonization of data, and the integration of metabolomics or other omics data.
Professor David Broadhurst (www.davidbroadhurst.net), born Chester UK, holds a first class honours degree in Electronic Engineering, an MSc in Medical Informatics, and a PhD on the subject of ‘‘Application of Artificial Neural Networks and Evolutionary Algorithms to Metabolic Profiling’’. He has been an active member of the metabolomics community for the last 18 years, where he is a recognized expert in design of experiments, signal processing, biostatistics, and machine learning. David worked for an extended period as a post-doctoral research fellow developing large-scale clinical metabolomics protocols alongside Dr. Warrick Dunn, at the University of Manchester as part of Professor Douglas Kell’s Bioanalytical Sciences Group. In 2009 he moved to Cork University Maternity Hospital, Ireland, to investigate pre-symptomatic metabolite biomarkers predictive of major pregnancy diseases. In 2011 David was appointed Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Alberta, Canada, where he was scientific lead for a range of basic/clinical metabolomics projects, and continued his pregnancy related research. More recently he has expanded his research portfolio to a diverse range of post-genomic translational/precision medicine projects. In March 2016 he was appointed to his current position as Professor at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia. In addition to many collaborative Systems Biology projects. His current research primarily focuses the application and optimization of diverse multivariate modelling techniques (parametric & non-parametric linear models, decision trees, machine learning, Structural Equation Modelling, Multilevel random-effects models, etc.) within the domain of systems-biology. Additionally, he has research interests in data visualization, design of experiments, and developing quality assurance procedures for ‘omic based studies. David travels extensively around the globe lecturing on the perils of poor experimental design and importance of robust and diverse statistical analysis.
Craig E. Wheelock is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, where he serves as director of the Integrative Molecular Phenotyping Laboratory (www.metabolomics.se). He is also a visiting professor at the Gunma Institute for Advanced Research (GIAR), Japan, where he leads the Karolinska International Open Laboratory in metabolomics. Following post-doctoral work on lipid mediators at the University of California Davis, he conducted additional post-doctoral studies at the KEGG laboratory in Kyoto University, Japan. In 2006, he was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship to relocate to the Karolinska Institute, where he founded the Integrative Molecular Phenotyping Laboratory. Research in his group focuses on elucidating mechanisms in respiratory disease, with an emphasis on the relationship between childhood environmental exposure and disease onset. In recent years, efforts in his group has moved into the challenges of data analysis and the laboratory has worked extensively on applying multivariate modeling to integrate and investigate ‘omics-based data structures. He is a member of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Science Event Working Group and a consultant on the NIEHS funded Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) project at Mount Sinai, New York. When not balancing his time between Sweden and Japan, he enjoys teaching his kids to kayak and play nicely with others.
National Cancer Institute, USA
Krista Zanetti represents the National Institutes of Health on the Metabolomic Epidemiology Task Group. She 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). COMETS currently which brings together over 70 prospective cohorts from the North America, South America, Europe and Asia (http://epi.grants.cancer.gov/comets) to leverage existing resources and data; and work collectively to develop methods, tools and protocols for data harmonization and sharing, quality control and data standardization.
Steffen Neumann studied computer science and bioinformatics at Bielefeld University, and now his group focuses on the development of tools and databases for metabolomics and computational mass spectrometry. The group develops algorithms for data processing of metabolite profiling experiments, which are available in several Open Source Bioconductor packages, and addresses the identification of unknowns in mass spectrometry data. The IPB is member of the MassBank consortium and operated the first MassBank server in Europe. The MetFrag and MetFusion tools allow the identification of compounds where no reference spectra are available.
Professor in Metabolomics
Director of NERC Environmental Metabolomics Facility
School of Biosciences
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, B15 2TT, U.K.
Tel: +44 (0)121 414-2219
Mark R. Viant is a Professor of Metabolomics in the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham, UK. He also serves as the Director of the Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) Environmental Metabolomics Facility at Birmingham. Prof. Viant received his BSc in Chemistry and PhD in Chemical Physics at the University of Southampton, UK. Following postdoctoral research in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, he shifted his research interests into environmental toxicology, conducting further postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Davis. In 2003 he was awarded a NERC Advanced Fellowship and relocated to the University of Birmingham, where his research team now focuses on the development and application of both NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry in environmental metabolomics, specifically as tools for chemical risk assessment and environmental monitoring. His primary research interests include the molecular characterisation and understanding of stress responses in aquatic organisms, in particular to environmental pollution. In addition his team develops novel analytical and bioinformatic approaches for metabolomics. He has authored over 90 publications, including pioneering applications of metabolomics to environmental health issues in aquatic organisms.
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 (www.pri.wur.nl/uk/). 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 (www.meta-phor.eu). He is co-founder of the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre (www.metabolomicscentre.nl) 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 (www.metabolomics.nl). 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.
C. Junot is a doctor of Pharmacy. After having gained a PhD in Analytical Chemistry in 2000 (Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris), he joined GlaxoSmithKline laboratories and developed experience in the field of pharmacokinetics and metabolism applied to drug discovery for 2 years. Since 2002, he works at the Life Science Division of CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique) where he develops mass spectrometry based analytical methodologies for metabolome analysis in the fields of medicine and microbiology. C. Junot has been appointed as head of the Laboratory for Drug Metabolism Studies since September 2010. He is the deputy coordinator of the French MetaboHUB infrastructure for metabolomics and fluxomics and also in charge of the coordination of analytical chemistry developments in this infrastructure.
HighChem
Čajakova 18
Bratislava
Slovakia
81105
Robert Mistrik (46), HighChem, Slovakia, has a masters degree in chemistry from the Slovak Technical University, Bratislava, Slovakia and a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, Austria. He held a postdoctoral position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD, USA. He is the creator of Mass Frontier, a software for processing and interpreting mass spectral data in which the spectral tree concept was introduced. He is the author of precursor ion fingerprinting method that allows identification of metabolites based on substructural identities of tandem mass spectra. In 2009, he was awarded the Head of the Year prize, a national award for exceptional achievements in science and technology. Dr. Mistrik has been a member of the scientific steering committee of the METAcancer consortium, aiming to identify small molecule biomarkers in breast cancer tissue. Currently, he is leading the m/z Cloud initiative that is a collaborative effort to build a comprehensive spectral trees library for identification of metabolic components utilizing molecular evolutionary patterns.
Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
Dr. Laura K. Reed, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama since 2010. She also serves as the co-founder of the International Drosophila Metabolomics Curation Consortium. She received her BS from the Department of Biology at the University of Oregon in 2000 and her Ph.D. from the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Arizona. In 2007, she received a NIH-NRSA postdoctoral fellowship to study the genetic and dietary contributions to Metabolic Syndrome-like phenotypes in Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) at North Carolina State University. Professor Reed continues her NIH funded research on the genetic and environmental factors of obesity by mapping the genes contributing to metabolic interactions with diet in fruit flies. Dr. Reed also teaches Integrated Genomics and Evolutionary Biology courses.
Webpage: flygxe.ua.edu
olomic Function Research Group
RIKEN Plant Science Center
Professor of Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Chiba University
Japan
Kazuki Saito obtained PhD from the University of Tokyo in 1982. After staying in Keio University in Japan and Ghent University in Belgium (Prof. Marc Van Montagu’s laboratory) as a post-doc, in 1995 he has been appointed as a full professor at Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chiba University, until now. He now holds the post of Deputy Director of RIKEN Plant Science Center, where he is also Group Director of the Metabolomic Function Research Group. Kazuki is one of the pioneers in the field of plant metabolomics, featuring with the efforts on functional genomics by integration with transcriptomics. For his distinguished research, in 2010 he was awarded The Prize for Science and Technology (Research Category) by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. Kazuki’s current research aims to understand the mechanism and regulation of plant metabolism through the genomics and post-genomics approaches and subsequently to apply the obtained knowledge to synthetic biology.
Web:
http://labs.psc.riken.jp/mart/English/index.html http://www.p.chiba-u.ac.jp/lab/idenshi/index-e.html
I got my PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from University College London, UK. I started working in the field of metabolomics in University of Cambridge, overtime moving from lab experimental settings towards data analysis and data handling. In the past, I have worked as scientific investigator at the Medical Research Council, Cambridge UK. In 2012, I joined EMBL-EBI and currently work as the Scientific Coordinator. At EMBL-EBI we host the MetaboLights (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/metabolights/), the first general purpose repository for metabolomics data. For me, open access data sharing is of paramount importance to the metabolomics community growth, enabling us to move a step closer to the result reproducibility, a key objective for any scientific field. Here metabolomics standards can play a vital role (http://www.metabolomics-msi.org) having the opportunity to manage and coordinate a large EU infrastructure project on metabolomics data standards, COSMOS (Coordination of Standards in Metabolomics – http://cosmos-fp7.eu/) , it has re-ignited standards effort within community leaders, in a more bottom-up approach. Such efforts combined with data sharing in MetaboLights, I believe would benefit the community substantially. Professionally, I’m member of the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre, Cambridge Neuroscience and Cambridge Cancer Centre. I’m the main organizer of the “EMBO Practical Course on Metabolomics Bioinformatics for Life Scientists 2012 – 2016″ giving me the opportunity to work with group of talented and excellent instructors/tutors in metabolomics that share the same passion for metabolomics data handling. I’m also associate Editor for Frontiers Metabolomics Journal.
My role as the chair of data standards task group would be to work with leaders in this area, both from metabolomics and proteomics communities as well as industry, to establish and promote community wide agreed standards, in a more practical approach rather that just statements, focusing on data standards formats first.
Working together with Jan Stanstrup, we hope to merge and revitalise the metabolomics forum, and bring society activities to public domain discussions, for better engagement with society members and general metabolomics community. Please join us and share your thoughts and expertise with us.
http://www.metabolomics-forum.com/viewforum.php?uid=535&f=37&start=0
Prof. Dr. Christoph Steinbeck
Analytical Chemistry – Cheminformatics and Chemometrics Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry Friedrich-Schiller-University Lessingstr. 8, D-07743 Jena, Germany
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6966-0814
Christoph Steinbeck was born in Neuwied in 1966. He studied chemistry at the University of Bonn, where he received his diploma and doctoral degree at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, working on methods for computer assisted structure elucidation. In 1996, he joined the group of Prof. Clemens Richert at Tufts University in Boston, MA, USA, where he worked in the area of biomolecular NMR on the 3D structure elucidation of peptide-nucleic acid conjugates. In 1997 Christoph Steinbeck became head of the Structural Chemo- and Bioinformatics Workgroup at the newly founded Max-Planck-Institute of Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany. In 2002 he moved to Cologne University Bioinformatics Center (CUBIC) as head of the Research Group for Molecular Informatics. In 2003 Christoph Steinbeck received his Habilitation in Organic Chemistry from Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany. From 2008 to 2016, he was Head of Cheminformatics and Metabolism at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Hinxton, Cambridge, UK. During this time, his group developed open chemistry databases for the biosciences, such as ChEBI, the dictionary and ontology of Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, and the MetaboLights database, a repository and reference database for Metabolomics.
Today, Christoph Steinbeck is Professor for Analytical Chemistry, Cheminformatics and Chemometrics at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany. The Steinbeck group’s research is dedicated to computational metabolomics and natural products research, the elucidation of metabolomes by means of computer-assisted structure elucidation and other prediction methods and algorithm development in cheminformatics. The group further helps developing a number of the leading open source software packages in Chemo- and Bioinformatics, including the Chemistry Development Kit (CDK), which was co-founded by Christoph Steinbeck
Christoph Steinbeck is also leading the European e-infrastructure project PhenoMeNal on large scale computing with human metabolic phenotyping data.
Over the course of his career, Christoph Steinbeck was founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cheminformatics, a director of the Metabolomics Society, chairman of the Computers-Information-Chemistry (CIC) division of the German Chemical Society, and established the German Conference on Cheminformatics. Christoph is a lifetime member of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists (WATOC), a member of the Metabolomics Society, the German Chemical Society, as well as of various editorial boards and committees.
Lloyd W. Sumner, Ph.D.
Professor of Biochemistry
Director, MU Metabolomics Center
240d Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center
1201 Rollins Street
Columbia, MO 65211
Office: 573-882-5486
Center: 573-882-5596
Web: metabolomics.missouri.edu
Dr. Sumner acquired his B.Sc. degree in chemistry with a minor in mathematics in 1989 from Cameron University in Lawton, OK, USA and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry focused on mass spectrometry in 1993 from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, OK, USA. He then joined Texas A&M University, College Station TX, where he was the Director of the Mass Spectrometry Applications Laboratory and where he later served as the cofounder and Associate Director of the TAMU Laboratory for Biological Mass Spectrometry with Prof. David H Russell. He joined The Noble Foundation in 1999 and rose to the rank of Professor within the Plant Biology Division. Dr. Sumner relocated to the University of Missouri, Columbia in January 2016 as a Professor in the Biochemistry Department and Director of the new University of Missouri Metabolomics Center. Dr. Sumner’s research is focused on the development, integration and application of large-scale biochemical profiling of plant metabolites, proteins, and transcripts (metabolomics, proteomics and transcriptomics) for the discovery and characterization of the molecular and biochemical components related to plant natural products/specialized metabolites biosynthesis. He also applies these integrated omics technologies for greater insight into the physiological and biochemical consequences of gene expression and system responses to genetic and environmental perturbations. In the process, he has published approximately 135 peer reviewed articles and book chapters; many with leading national and international collaborators. Dr. Sumner’s research is or has been supported by the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, NSF 2010, NSF Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, NSF Major Research Instrumentation program, NSF-JST joint Metabolomics for a Low Carbon Society, NSF Integrative Organismal Systems, and The Oklahoma Commission for the Advancement of Science and Technology. Dr. Sumner is currently a Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science; President of the Phytochemical Society of North America (2014-2017), former Treasurer (2010-2012) and President (2008-2010) of the Metabolomics Society; 2013 Lifetime Honorary Fellow of the Metabolomics Society; Co-founding Member of the International Advisory Committee for Plant Metabolomics; Principal investigator of a new Plant, Algae, and Microbial Metabolomics Research Coordination Network (PAMM-NET), and a 2007 Distinguished Alumni of Cameron University. Dr. Sumner has served as a Managing Editor for Plant Physiology, Front Pages Co-Editor and Editorial Board member for the journal Metabolomics, Associate Editor of Frontiers in Plant Metabolism and Chemical Diversity, and review Editor for several plant and metabolomics related Frontiers journals.
Bio to come.
Professor in Analytical and Clinical Metabolomics
School of Biosciences
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, B15 2TT, U.K.
Prof. Warwick (Rick) Dunn obtained a BSc (Hons) degree in Chemistry with Analytical Chemistry and Toxicology at The University of Hull followed by a PhD at BP Chemicals and The University of Hull focused on the placement of mass spectrometers on industrial chemical process plants. He has developed a passion for academic life and from 2003-2012 he worked at The University of Manchester, first as a post-doctoral researcher with Professor Douglas Kell and then as a Lecturer in Metabolomics. He moved to the University of Birmingham in early 2013 and is currently a Professor in Metabolomics, Director of Mass Spectrometry in Phenome Centre Birmingham and Director of the Birmingham Metabolomics Training Centre. Warwick has performed metabolomics research for 19 years and has concentrated his research on analytical and software tool development and their application in untargeted and targeted assays. He has a passion for maximising metabolite annotation in untargeted studies and has developed tools for conversion of m/z to putative metabolite annotations (PUTMEDID_LCMS) and in optimal acquisition of MS/MS data. Away from development work he focuses on the study of metabolism during human ageing and in human diseases to understand pathophysiological mechanisms and identify prognostic or diagnostic biomarkers for stratified medicine. Warwick is currently Associate Editor (Reviews) for the journal Metabolomics and is a past-director of the Metabolomics Society (2010-2015). Warwick has published greater than 120 peer-reviewed papers (>12,500 citations) and 6 book chapters.
Dr Kirwan started her career as a clinical veterinarian where she became increasingly interested in how clinical research translated into changes in clinical practice and evidence based medicine. After completing her PhD at the University of Liverpool, she moved to the University of Birmingham, UK and from there to the Max Delbrück Center of Molecular Medicine, Germany. She is part of the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) Initiative to improve translational research and now heads the BIH Metabolomics Platform in Berlin. This has enabled her to focus on health related metabolomics and mass spectrometry research and she is particularly interested in the gut-brain-heart health triad. She is currently involved in several studies which involve long term sampling and monitoring of individuals and this has led to an interest in appropriate biobanking of samples for metabolomics and lipidomics. She is also a member of the Metabolomics quality assurance and quality control consortium (MQACC) and the Evidence based veterinary network.
Marta Cascante is Full Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at University of Barcelona and leader of the Integrative Systems Biology, Metabolomics and Cancer team. She has authored over 250 publications. She is partner of European translational research projects (H2020) in the field of systems medicine and metabolomics and member of the editorial advisory boards of Metabolomics and BMC systems Biology. She has been distinguished in 2015 with Icrea Academia Prize and with the Narcis Monturiol Medal of the Catalan Government for her scientific merits.
Research interests are focused on cancer and metabolic diseases with the goal of elucidating the networks and pathways that are fundamental in their development and progression. More specifically, the Integrative Systems Biology, Metabolomics and Cancer team’s mission is to devise new therapeutic strategies to forestall therapeutic resistance in cancer through integrative approaches that afford a rational identification of molecular targets, with emphasis on metabolic regulators, for effective synergistic combinations with chemotherapeutics with demonstrated efficacy and/or natural products. To tackle our mission, our team assembles high-level expertise in comprehensive metabolic analysis, bio-computational approaches, generation of cellular and pre-clinical animal models, functional genomics and drug discovery. We have generated proof-of-principle evidences that resulted in publications and a patent application of the effectiveness of this approach. We intend to generalize our approaches to inhibitors currently in use as first-in-line or emerging therapies, by unveiling and targeting the corresponding adaptive metabolic responses in order to overcome therapeutic resistance in cancer. Furthermore, in the framework of H2020 project “PheNoMenal “, coordinated by EBI, her team has been contributing to develop and deploy an e-infrastructure that makes it feasible for healthcare researchers to process analyze and mine molecular phenotyping data, to facilitate large-scale data analysis in the coming age of Precision Medicine.
Professor Brennan has been in University College Dublin (UCD) since 2000, as a Research Fellow, Career Track Investigator, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and, since 2015, Professor. Previously she was a postdoctoral fellow in Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica in Portugal and a visiting scientist in the University of Cambridge, and was educated in Trinity College Dublin and the University of Southampton. Professor Brennan is at the forefront of nutrition and metabolomics research, running the Nutrition, Biomarkers, and Health research group (www.ucd.ie/nutrimarkers), obtaining considerable national and European research funding (over €6 million as PI), and publishing numerous peer-reviewed articles. Recent funding successes have included a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Award for the project ‘A-DIET: Metabolomics based biomarkers of dietary intake – new tools for nutrition research’ (2015-2020; €1.9 m). Professor Brennan led UCD’s inputs into Joint Programme Initiatives (JPIs) in the areas of ‘A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life’ and ‘Biomarkers for Nutrition and Health’. Professor Brennan has supervised 13 PhD students and two Masters students to completion as Principal Supervisor. She has been Director of the European Nutrigenomics Organisation since 2014, and is currently Secretary of the Irish Nutrition Society. Professor Brennan has acted as an external examiner for several PhD vivas and has given more than 20 invited conference presentations. She reviews numerous manuscripts, including for leading journals such as Nature, Journal of Proteome Research, OMICS, PLoS ONE, PLoS, Analytical Biochemistry, American Journal of Physiology, AJCN, BJN. Her publications have obtained over 6,000 citations, and a h-index of 39. She is also involved in developing the incorporation of research into teaching, and a range of outreach activities.
Professor, Departments of Biological Sciences and Computing Science, University of Alberta
Director, The Metabolomics Innovation Centre (TMIC)
Dr. David Wishart (PhD Yale, 1991) is a Professor in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Computing Science at the University of Alberta. He also holds adjunct appointments with the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and with the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. He has been with the University of Alberta since 1995. Dr. Wishart’s research interests are very wide ranging, covering nanotechnology, molecular biology, analytical chemistry, metabolomics and bioinformatics. For the past 12 years, Dr. Wishart has led the “Human Metabolome Project” (HMP), a multi-university, multi-investigator project that is cataloguing all of the known metabolites in human tissues and biofluids. Using advanced methods in NMR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, multi-dimensional chromatography and machine learning Dr. Wishart and his colleagues have identified or found evidence for more than 110,000 metabolites in the human body. This information has been archived on a freely accessible web-resource called the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB). More recently, Dr. Wishart’s efforts have focused on using metabolomics to develop rapid diagnostic tests for cancer, colitis and kidney disease. This is part of an ongoing effort to integrate metabolomics into precision medicine. Over the course of his career Dr. Wishart has published more than 400 research papers in high profile journals on a wide variety of subject areas. He currently directs The Metabolomics Innovation Centre (TMIC), Canada’s national metabolomics laboratory.
WWW: https://bioscience.fi/research/systems-medicine/profile
School of Medical Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden
Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Oil Crops Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wuhan, P. R. China
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.
I graduated with a BSC and a PhD from the Department of Biochemistry, University College London and then carried out postdoctoral research first in biophysical chemistry with Kasper Kirschner at the Biozentrum, Basel and then as an EMBO Fellow at Stanford Magnetic Resonance Laboratory with Oleg Jardetzky. My background in enzymology, biophysics and structural biology lead to subsequent applications especially using NMR with stable isotope tracers to understanding metabolic networks, particular in cancer. I have been using NMR in metabolic analyses since the early 1980’s, in parallel with biophysical studies of proteins and nucleic acids. I have been collaborating with Teresa Fan and Richard Higashi for more than 30 years, and we established methods for stable isotope tracing in a wide variety of model systems as well as human subjects, that we termed SIRM (for Stable Isotope Resolved Metabolomics).
Karsten Suhre is a Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) and the Director of the Virtual Metabolomics and Bioinformatics Core at the WCM campus in Qatar. He publishes in top-tier journals, including Nature and Nature Genetics, and has a publication H-index of 50. He holds honorary appointments with Kings College London and Cambridge University (both institutions maintain large population cohorts) and sits on the International Scientific Advisory Board of the UK Biobank. Before joining WCM-Q in 2011, Prof. Suhre was Professor for Bioinformatics at the Department of Biology of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany and was also a Group Leader for Metabolomics Research at the Institute for Bioinformatics and Systems Biology of the Helmholtz Center Munich, where he initiated metabolomics research in the KORA population study. Between 1994 and 2006, he served at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), first as a Charge and then as a Director of Research, with a two-year interruption (2000-2001), where he worked as a Project Engineer in the German Automobile Industry. After a very interdisciplinary career starting with Theoretical Physics, followed by Atmospheric Sciences, and then Structural and Functional Biology, Prof. Suhre is now investigating how genetic variation in human metabolism interacts with environmental challenges and lifestyle factors in the development of complex diseases, especially diabetes, cancer, heart and kidney diseases, and how to translate findings from studies with deep molecular phenotyping (multi-omics) to clinical application.
Director & Chair, National Metabolomics Core Facility,
Principal Investigator, Medicum, Faculty of Medicine,
Institute for Molecular Medicine FIMM, HiLIFE, University of Helsinki,
P.O Box-20, Helsinki-00014, Finland.
Website: https://www.fimm.fi/en/services/technology-centre/metabolomics
Vidya Velagapudi obtained her Bachelors in Bioscience (1999), Masters in Biotechnology (2001), Advanced PG diploma in Bioinformatics (2002), and then joined a Pharmaceutical company as a Research Associate (2002) in India. Later on she moved to Germany in 2003 for her graduate studies and obtained Ph.D in Applied Biochemistry from the University of Saarland in collaboration with the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbrucken. Dr. Velagapudi then moved to VTT, Finland as a post-doctoral fellow in collaboration with University of Cambridge, UK, and continued as a Research Scientist and Project Manager during 2006-2009. Since 2010, Dr. Velagapudi has been leading the national Metabolomics core facility at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM). Dr. Velagapudi is also affiliated to University of Helsinki (UH) as an Adjunct Professor (2012-) and Principal Investigator at the Faculty of Medicine (2016-), and Chair of Metabolomics Platforms in Biocenter Finland and HiLIFE (2017-). Dr. Velagapudi has published around 60 scientific articles in reputed journals and given over 30 invited talks in international scientific events and conferences. Dr. Velagapudi was an invited Metabolomics technology expert for an interview (2014) and spotlight article contributor (2016) at MetaboNews Letter, and international organising committee member for the Metabolomics Society 13th annual conference in Australia. Dr. Velagapudi is Finnish ambassador for ELIXIR Metabolomics community, a member of Metabolomics quality assurance and control consortium (mQACC), and an invited reviewer for H2020 proposals and core facilities.
Cristina Andres-Lacueva is Associate Professor at the Nutrition, Food Science & Gastronomy Department of the Pharmacy and Food Science Faculty at the University of Barcelona (UB) and leader of the Biomarkers & Nutritional and Food Metabolomics research group.
Posdoctoral Research at Tufts University/HNRCA (Boston). IP in CIBERFES-isciii, Biomedical Research Network on Frailty and Healthy Aging. Author of over 190 peer-reviewed papers. She is partner of an Innovation by Design project, CooK2Health and Coordinator of the INJOY Campus Activity both from EIT-Health/H2020. Active participation on the EU-Joint Programming Initiative a Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life JPI-HDHL Actions Biomarkers, Microbiomics, Nutrition and Cognition and INTIMIC. At National level, active leadership in grants with MINECO & Health Institute Carlos III, FIS as well as Tranfer Actions with Industry by CDTI funds.
My scientific activity is mainly focused in dietary and nutritional assessment as the major determinants of human health. This activity has comprised the understanding of qualitative and quantitative links between dietary patterns, nutritional phenotype and risk factors for diet-related chronic diseases. The main goals of my research have been: i) Applying intensively LC-MS driven untargeted and targeted metabolomics analysis to understand how new dietary biomarkers identified modulate diet-disease risk associations using pathway and network approaches; ii) The identification of robust “metabolic signatures of eating habits” for a range of foods of high public health significance; iii) To define and develop new methodological strategies for the biomarker discovery; iv) The development of an in-house human metabolome database and bioinformatic and biostatistics tools for the interpretation and identification of new biomarkers.
Hello. I am Susan Sumner and I direct the NIH Common Fund (C-F) Eastern Regional Comprehensive Metabolomics Research Center (RCMRC) at RTI International (a non-profit basic research institute located in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA). The RTI RCMRC is part of the NIH C-F Metabolomics Consortium that established Metabolomics Workbench, and worked together to establish standards for data deposition and reporting. I also work within the NIH C-F program to develop and implement programs for training early career and seasoned scientists who want to include metabolomics in their research. As the PI of the RTI RCMRC, I lead a team of 25 researchers who conduct targeted and broad spectrum metabolomics analysis of cells, tissues, and biological fluids using NMR and chromatography coupled mass spectrometry. My team works with basic, applied, and clinical researchers to identify biomarkers for the early detection and diagnosis of disease, to monitor treatments, and to provide insights into biological mechanisms. In addition to directing the metabolomics core at RTI, I also direct an analytical core for the NCATS-funded North Carolina Translational Sciences Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the metabolomics core for the NIEHS-funded Center for Human Health and Environment at North Carolina State University (NCSU), and the NIEHS-funded Untargeted Analysis Resource Core for the Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) Program at RTI. I serve on the editorial boards for Metabolomics, the Journal of Applied Toxicology, the Journal of Toxicology, and as an Associate Editor for Environmental Health Perspectives. I am an adjunct professor in the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, and the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Professor Ines Thiele is the principal investigator of the Molecular Systems Physiology group at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Her research aims to improve the understanding of how diet influences human health. Therefore, she uses a computational modelling approach, termed constraint-based modelling, which has gained increasing importance in systems biology. Her group builds comprehensive models of human cells and human-associated microbes; then employs them together with experimental data to investigate how nutrition and genetic predisposition can affect one’s health. In particular, she is interested in applying her computational modelling approach for better understanding inherited and neurodegenerative diseases. Ines Thiele has been pioneering models and methods allowing large-scale computational modelling of the human gut microbiome and its metabolic effect on human metabolism.
Ines Thiele earned her PhD in bioinformatics from the University of California, San Diego, in 2009. From 2009 until 2013, Ines Thiele was an Assistant Professor at the University of Iceland. From April 2013 until January 2019, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Luxembourg. Since February 2019, Ines Thiele is a Professor for Systems Biomedicine at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
In 2013, Ines Thiele received the ATTRACT fellowship from the Fonds National de la Recherche (Luxembourg). In 2015, she was elected as EMBO Young Investigator. In 2017, she was awarded the prestigious ERC starting grant. She is an author of over 80 international scientific papers and reviewer for multiple journals and funding agencies.
Associate Professor
Molecular and Cellular Biology (College of Biological Sciences)
UC Davis Genome Center
1315 GBSF
University of California, Davis, CA 95616
Dr. Fiehn obtained his MSc in Analytical Sciences in 1993 from the Free University Berlin and then received his PhD in 1997 at the Technical University of Berlin in Analytical Chemistry. From 1998-1999 Dr. Feihn started out as an associate research scientist in metabolomics at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam. He later became a group leader from 2000-2004. Dr. Feihn joined the faculty at the University of California at Davis in 2004 as an associate professor with the department of Molecular & Cellular Biology at UC Davis. He is also a member of the Metabolomics Society and the American Society for Mass Spectrometry.
Dr. Mioara Larion received her B.Sc. in Biochemistry from Cuza University, Lasi, Romania in 2002. She moved to Florida State University where she received a M.Sc. in Biophysics in 2005 working on saturation transfer electron paramagnetic resonance methods and their sensitivity to molecular motion upon increasing the field. In 2009, Dr. Larion received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry working on divergent evolution of function in bacterial kinases and the origin of kinetic cooperativity in human pancreatic glucokinase in the laboratory of Prof. Brian Miller. After obtaining her Ph.D in 2009, she was awarded the AHA postdoctoral fellowship to work with Prof. Rafael Brüschweiler on biophysical characterization of glucokinase and PHHI-like variants. Her work helped understand the mechanism of glucokinase’s activation for design of better anti-diabetic therapeutics. Currently, her major interest is in metabolomics of brain tumors. In 2015, she started a metabolomics-based laboratory at National Cancer Institute, to work on isocitrate dehydrogenase mutant brain tumors. Dr. Larion’s work on understanding metabolic reprograming of lower grade gliomas in the indolent and progressed state has identified imaging and therapeutic targets.