Society Committees

Conference Committee

Natasa Giallourou
Natasa Giallourou Chair
Warwick Dunn
Warwick "Rick" Dunn
María Eugenia Monge
María Eugenia Monge
Roy Goodacre
Roy Goodacre
Kati Hanhineva
Kati Hanhineva
Jessica Lasky-Su
Jessica Lasky-Su
Matej Oresic
Matej Orešič
Tomáš Pluskal
Tomáš Pluskal
Silvia Radenkovic
Silvia Radenkovic
Stacey Reinke
Stacey Reinke
Fidele Tugizimana
Fidele Tugizimana
Lynn Vanhaecke
Lynn Vanhaecke

Education & Training Committee

This committee will enhance the availability and quality of training and education in metabolomics techniques to the global research community. It will help coordinate activities within the Metabolomics Society and engage and assist established training centers around the world. This will be achieved by:

  • Guiding the implementation of pedagogical best practice in training and education initiatives
  • Contributing educational and training content relevant to metabolomics
  • Enabling the exchange of ideas surrounding formal training and education in metabolomics.
Stacey Reinke
Stacey Reinke Chair
Tee Khim Boon
Tee Khim Boon
Evelina Charidemou
Evelina Charidemou
Warwick Dunn
Warwick "Rick" Dunn
Álvaro Fernández Ochoa
Álvaro Fernández Ochoa
Natasa Giallourou
Natasa Giallourou
Fabien Jourdan
Fabien Jourdan
Jessica Lasky-Su
Jessica Lasky-Su
Susana Palma
Susana Palma Duran
Fidele Tugizimana
Fidele Tugizimana
Candice Ulmer
Candice Ulmer Holland
Michael Witting
Michael Witting

Early-Career Members Network (EMN) Committee

The EMN aims to provide a forum for metabolomics researchers at the start of their professional career and serve the early-career members of the Metabolomics Society.  Aspirations include, but are not limited to: strengthen communication and collaboration, encourage opportunities and invention, support developmental learning and enjoy professional growth.

Silvia Radenkovic
Silvia Radenkovic Chair
Marvin Nathanael Iman
Marvin Nathanel Iman EMN Secretary
Millena Cristina Barros Santos
Millena Barros-Santos EMN Treasurer
Domenica Berardi
Domenica Berardi
Breanna Dixon
Breanna Dixon
Manish Kumar
Manish Kumar
Aleš Kvasnička
Aleš Kvasnička
Daniel Mutithu
Daniel Mutithu
Diana Pinto
Diana Pinto
Anza Ramabulana
Anza-Tshilidzi Ramabulana
Daniela Ramirez
Daniela Andrea Ramirez
Monique Ryan
Monique Ryan
Thomas Vial
Thomas Vial
Simone Zuffa
Simone Zuffa
Natasa Giallourou
Natasa Giallourou Advisor

Membership Committee

The membership committee works to provide member services through the website and newsletters so that members are aware of the activities of the Society and can easily access the services that the Society makes available.

Fidele Tugizimana
Fidele Tugizimana Co-Chair
María Eugenia Monge
María Eugenia Monge Co-Chair
Susana Palma
Susana Alejandra Palma Duran
Laimdota Zizmare
Laimdota Zizmare
Koel Chaudhury
Koel Chaudhury
Marvin Nathanael Iman
Marvin Nathanael Iman
Fitri Amalia
Fitri Amalia
Candice Ulmer
Candice Ulmer Holland
Evelina Charidemou
Evelina Charidemou
Caroline Johnson
Caroline Johnson

Nominations & Election Committee

Fabien Jourdan
Fabien Jourdan Chair
Jessica Lasky-Su
Jessica Lasky-Su

Publications Committee

Michael Witting
Michael Witting Chair
Jules Griffin
Jules Griffin
Kati Hanhineva
Kati Hanhineva
Jessica Lasky-Su
Jessica Lasky-Su
Matej Oresic
Matej Orešič

Website & Communications Committee

Warwick Dunn
Warwick "Rick" Dunn Chair
Fitri Amalia
Fitri Amalia
Roy Goodacre
Roy Goodacre
Fabien Jourdan
Fabien Jourdan
Matej Oresic
Matej Orešič
Tomáš Pluskal
Tomáš Pluskal
Lynn Vanhaecke
Lynn Vanhaecke
Michael Witting
Michael Witting
Natasa Giallourou

Natasa Giallourou

Metabolon
Cyprus
Email

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

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

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

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

Warwick "Rick" Dunn

Warwick “Rick” Dunn

University of Liverpool
UK
Email

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

Professor Warwick “Rick” Dunn holds a chair in Analytical and Clinical Metabolomics at the University of Liverpool. He obtained a lectureship in 2011 at the University of Manchester and moved to a lectureship at the University of Birmingham in 2013. He obtained a BSc(Hons) in Chemistry with Analytical Chemistry from the University of Hull and a PhD from the same university focussed on developing interfaces to allow online monitoring of chemical process plants using mass spectrometry in association with BP Chemicals. He leads the Analytical and Clinical Metabolomics Group at the University of Liverpool. His research is focused on two areas (1) the development of new analytical tools and methods to enhance data quality, efficiency of metabolite annotation, coverage of detectable metabolites and sample collection strategies and (2) the application of untargeted and targeted metabolomics to the study of metabolism across the life course in humans including pre-birth, ageing, endocrinology, inflammatory and immune diseases and cancers with a focus on precision medicine. He was one of the founding coordinators of the metabolomics quality assurance and quality control consortium (www.mqacc.org). He was a board member of the society from 2010 to 2015 and now from 2022 to 2024. He sits on the Website and Communications committee, conference committee and education and training committee of the Metabolomics Society.  His career goals are to make metabolomics a standard resource applied in biological research and to train the next generation of metabolomics researchers.

María Eugenia Monge

María Eugenia Monge

CIBION – CONICET
Argentina
Email

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

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

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

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

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

In 2022, she was awarded the Metabolomics Society Medal.

Roy Goodacre

Roy Goodacre

University of Liverpool
UK
Email
  • Society President – Board of Directors
  • Chair – Data Analysis Task Group

Roy Goodacre is Professor of Biological Chemistry at the University of Liverpool and a co-director of the Centre for Metabolomics Research.  He 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 health populations and investigate the frailty phenotype during the ageing process.

Trained as a microbiologist in Bristol, UK, he has a fascination with the microbial world.  Thus, 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 which can be used to generate chemical images of microbial cells.  Please see the wiki for more details.

Roy has published a substantial number of primary papers and reviews in metabolomics and data processing as well as Raman Spectroscopy, and if you like such metrics he has a H-index of over 100.

Outside of metabolomics, Roy is a proud Welshman and avid rugby supporter.  He is fascinated by the lunar landscape of Lanzarote and visits with the family as often as he can, where he loves to walk and visit the many charms that this volcanic island has to offer.

Kati Hanhineva

Kati Hanhineva

University of Turku
Finland
Email

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.

Jessica Lasky-Su

Jessica Lasky-Su

Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Harvard Medical School
USA
Email

  • Former Society President
  • Chair – Metabolomic Epidemiology Task Group

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.

Matej Oresic

Matej Orešič

Örebro University
Sweden

Email

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

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

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

Tomáš Pluskal

Tomáš Pluskal

Czech Academy of Sciences
Czech Republic
Email

I am a Junior Group Leader at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. My laboratory develops new computational and experimental approaches for connecting plant natural products to their biosynthetic enzymes, and for engineering novel biosynthetic circuits using synthetic biology tools. Presently I am supervising 4 Ph.D. students and 4 postdocs with both computational and experimental expertise. I myself have an interdisciplinary background in computer science (MSc) and molecular biotechnology (Ph.D.). I first started working in metabolomics in 2006 during my PhD in Japan, where I developed the complete workflows for LC-MS analyses of fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe). At the same time, I started developing the MZmine software for mass spectrometry data processing, which has become one of my signature projects. During my postdoc at the Whitehead Institute (MIT) in the U.S., I studied the biosynthesis of psychoactive molecules in the kava plant (Piper methysticum). I am fascinated by the complex chemistry and molecular interactions that we can observe in nature, and in my own lab I am trying to apply diverse approaches to address this complexity.

Silvia Radenkovic

Silvia Radenkovic

University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht
the Netherlands
Email

  • Chair – EMN Committee

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

Stacey Reinke

Stacey Reinke

Edith Cowan University
Australia
Email

  • Chair – Education & Training Committee

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

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

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

Fidele Tugizimana

Fidele Tugizimana

University of Johannesburg
& Omnia Group Ltd
South Africa
Email

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

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

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

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

Lynn Vanhaecke

Lynn Vanhaecke

Ghent University
Belgium
Email

Lynn Vanhaecke is a Professor at the Laboratory of Integrative Metabolomics (LIMET) at Ghent University, Belgium since 2011 with a 20% appointment at the Institute of Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast, UK since 2018. She holds a Ph.D. in Bioscience Engineering (2008) on gut microbial food metabolism. 

Her team has specific expertise in optimizing and validating high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS)-based metabolomics and lipidomics methods with a focus on gastrointestinal matrices (saliva, stool, in vitro digests) and uses the latter to explore metabolic pathways of food- and gut microbiome-related diseases ranging from food allergies to obesity and its comorbidities. She is also particularly interested in the application of ambient ionization-based HRMS (specifically REIMS) for biofluid and food metabolomics and invented the MetaSamp® biofluid sampler in this context. 

Lynn’s lab has pioneered the field of DNA adductomics in the EU by developing a high-end analytical UHPLC-HRMS platform for untargeted DNA adduct measurements. In recent years, her lab has also gained an interest in the computational part of the metabolomics workflow with dedicated bioinformaticians on staff. Lynn is coordinator of the core facility on small molecule analysis (MSsmall) at Ghent University and a board member of the Nutrigenomics Society (NuGO). 

She was involved in the Horizon 2020 JPI-HDHL Foodball project and two EIT Food projects on food metabolomics and is now a core partner of the first Flemish Exposome project (Flexigut). LIMET’s metabolomics workflows have been sublicensed to Prodigest under the brand name MetaKey® for commercial application.

Tee Khim Boon

Tee Khim Boon

Universiti Malaya and Ministry of Health
Malaysia
Email

Tee Khim Boon is a PhD student in University Malaya, Malaysia. She earned her Master of Science in Clinical Drug Development in Queen Mary, University of London. For the past 10 years, she worked as regulatory pharmacists in National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency, Ministry of Health Malaysia to review clinical trial protocol and bioequivalence dossier, also performed Good Clinical Practice and Bioequivalence inspection locally and internationally. The accumulation efforts on international bioequivalence laboratory inspection and clinical trial inspection resulted in her strong foundation in targeted metabolomics analysis using LCMS. Her recent study is focus on exploration of LCMS-based pharmacometabolomics using combination of targeted and untargeted approach to study Metformin and herbal medicine in phase 1 clinical trial under control environment. She started her PhD project in a randomized, cross-over, pharmacometaboloics study of Andrographis paniculata and Metformin in healthy volunteers under fasting condition in 2019 (ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT04161404). Her long-term vision is promoting pharmacometabolomics research into phase 1 clinical trial by integrating pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and clinical outcomes using herbal medicine, generic medicines, and biosimilar medicines in the pharmaceutical drug development program.

Evelina Charidemou

Evelina Charidemou

University of Cyprus
Cyprus
Email

Dr Evelina Charidemou is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie studying the interplay between metabolism and epigenetics. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge UK. She specialises in Nutritional Biochemistry and Metabolism. Her research was performed at the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research (MRC HNR). She holds a bachelor’s degree (Hons) in Biochemistry from Imperial College London, where she was awarded the honorary degree of the Associateship from the Royal College of Science UK (ARCS) for excellence during her studies. Her research focuses on the development of metabolomics, lipidomics and epigenomics tools to investigate aspects of the Metabolic Syndrome, particularly Type II diabetes and Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Specifically, she is using high-performance liquid chromatography and multivariate bioinformatic tools to analyse biological samples and identify biomarkers to understand the underlying mechanism of metabolism in diseases.

In addition, she is an active member of the International Metabolomic Society, the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism, the Biochemical Society and she founded the Cyprus Metabolomic Network, of which she is currently the President.

Besides her scientific interests, Dr Charidemou is a former elite athlete of the Cyprus National Track and Field team and enjoys running.

Álvaro Fernández Ochoa

Álvaro Fernández Ochoa

University of Granada
Spain
Email

On November 8, 2019, I finished my doctoral thesis, entitled “Development and application of metabolomic strategies though advanced analytical techniques in biological samples” in the University of Granada (Spain). During my pre-doctoral period, I developed untargeted metabolomic methodologies to apply them in the study of bioactive compounds as well as in the study of systemic autoimmune diseases. As part of my training, I completed a predoctoral stay at Chalmers University (Sweden) in 2018, where I managed to specialize in data processing techniques and statistical analysis of metabolomic data using R language-based programs. From July 2020 to March 2022, I enjoyed a postdoctoral contract at the BIH metabolomics platform (Berlin), actively contributing to the MSTARS project (Multimodal clinical mass spectrometry to target treatment resistance). From April 2022, I am enjoying a postdoctoral contract at the University of Granada, where I am working on projects focused on the study of bioactive compounds from plant matrices through nutritional intervention trials.

Fabien Jourdan

Fabien Jourdan

INRAE – French National Institute for Agricultural Research
France
Email

  • Society Secretary – Board of Directors
  • Chair – Nominations & Elections Committee

Fabien Jourdan is a senior research scientist at INRAE (the French National Research Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research) Toulouse, France. He graduated with a PhD in computer science at the University of Montpellier (France) in 2004, working on the premises of social networks, in particular studying their topology. He then shared his time between a software startup company and a research assistant position. In 2005 he was hired by INRAE (Toulouse, France) to develop computational solutions for metabolomics studies (mainly NMR). In 2006 he spent a year as a visiting researcher at the University of Glasgow working with Pr. Barrett on metabolic profiling (HRMS) of Trypanosoma brucei, a parasite and causative agent of sleeping sickness. 

Fabien Jourdan has pioneered bioinformatics methods to study Genome-Scale Metabolic Networks using metabolomics (and other omics data) to predict metabolic impacts associated with genetic or environmental perturbations. His research team is currently applying these approaches to food toxicology and more broadly in studying the link between metabolism and human health (e.g. cancer).

Since 2009, Fabien Jourdan has led the development of MetExplore open access web server which is used by more than 800 users worldwide and maintained and developed by a group of 10 computational biologists. Since 2021, Fabien Jourdan is director of the French National infrastructure for metabolomics and fluxomics, MetaboHub. He was president of the French-speaking Metabolomics and Fluxomics Network (RFMF) from 2015 to 2019. He was elected on the board of the Metabolomics Society in 2019 and has been secretary since 2020.

Susana Palma

Susana Alejandra Palma Duran

Imperial College London
UK
Email

I hold a BSc in Clinical Biochemistry (University of Sonora, Mexico), MSc in Food Science (CIAD AC, Mexico), and PhD in Human Nutrition (University of Glasgow, UK). After completing my PhD studies, I worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Arizona State University (USA), investigating biomarkers of sugar intake and, later, as a research associate at the University of Cambridge and then transferred to Imperial College London (UK), investigating metabolic phenotypes associated with obesity. I recently joined the Metabolomics Science Technology Platform at The Francis Crick Institute, where I am involved in the implementation of MS-based metabolomics workflows and the development of supercritical fluid-MS methods. My research interest focuses on (a) the metabolic changes associated with chronic and age-related diseases, (b) the effect of dietary components and environmental factors on disease progression and, (c) translate that understanding into solutions for prevention.

Candice Ulmer

Candice Ulmer Holland

USDA Food Safety & Inspection Service
USA
Email

  • Society Treasurer – Board of Directors

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Witting

Michael Witting

Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen
Germany
Email

  • Chair – Publications Committee

Dr. Michael Witting studied Applied Chemistry with a functional direction into Biochemistry at the Georg-Simon-Ohm University of Applied Sciences Nuremberg and obtained his PhD in 2013 from the Technical University of Munich. Since 2021 he is heading the metabolomics part of the Metabolomics and Proteomics Core of Helmholtz Munich. In 2018 he was named on the Top 40 under 40 Power List of The Anaytical Scientist. He is an active member of the Metabolomics Quality Assurance and Quality Control Consortium (mQACC), the International Lipidomics Society and the Metabolomics Society, where he served as member on the Board of Directors from 2020 to 2022.

Marvin Nathanael Iman

Marvin Nathanael Iman

Osaka University
Japan
Email

  • Secretary – EMN Committee

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

Millena Cristina Barros Santos

Millena Cristina Barros-Santos

Inrae Bordeaux Nouvelle-Aquitaine
France
Email

  • Treasurer – EMN Committee

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

Domenica Berardi

Domenica Berardi

University of Strathclyde
UK
Email

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

Breanna Dixon

Breanna Dixon

University of Manchester
UK

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

Manish Kumar

Manish Kumar

IISER Pune
India

Manish Kumar, an emerging metabolomics researcher, has been trained in in biopesticide discovery and chemical ecology. His innovative Ph.D. research at IISER Pune combined non-targeted metabolomics and reverse genetics to identify biopesticides, utilizing RNAi molecules like dsRNA for pest control. Manish’s research pipeline also holds promise for discovering drugs to combat human diseases. His remarkable contributions have earned him prestigious awards, including the 2022 Bedukian Bio-Semiochemical Travel Award, the 2023 SERB-ITS Award from DST, Govt. of India, and the coveted Infosys Fellowship. In 2023, he was also honored with the EMN Travel Award by the Metabolomics Society.

Manish actively disseminates his research at top conferences and publishes in esteemed journals. He supports colleagues in metabolomics studies, demonstrating his dedication to advancing the field. Beyond research, Manish is a wildlife photographer, linguaphile, and adventurous food enthusiast. His unwavering commitment to innovation and knowledge exploration is evident. He eagerly anticipates contributing to the metabolomics community through his engagement with EMN. 

Aleš Kvasnička

Aleš Kvasnička

Palacký University &
Olomouc University Hospital
The Czech Republic

Aleš Kvasnička is a Ph.D. student in Medicinal Chemistry and Clinical Biochemistry and works as an academic and research assistant at the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Palacký University in Olomouc and Olomouc University Hospital in the Czech Republic. He obtained his Master’s degree in Biochemistry at the Faculty of Science, Palacký University in Olomouc and won several prizes in the Dean’s and Rector’s competitions for the best student work. He is a core member of the Young Researchers and Innovators Committee of the EpiLipidNET Cost Action and a core member of the Working Group: Promotion & Publications of the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. His research focuses on the application of clinical lipidomics to understand the pathobiochemistry of diseases, their progression, diagnosis and patient stratification. During his studies, he completed several internships as a visiting researcher in Germany (Michael Lämmerhofer’s Lab), Japan (Hiroshi Tsugawa’s Lab) and Norway (Jens Pahnke’s lab). He is looking forward to networking with new fellow metabolomics enthusiasts and to working with other EMN members to achieve the goals of the Metabolomics Society.

Daniel Mutithu

Daniel Mutithu

University of Cape Town
South Africa
Email

Daniel is a PhD student at the University of Cape Town, South Africa working on a metabolomics project aimed at understanding the metabolic biomarkers associated with valvular heart diseases. Further, he is the convener for the early-career members network of Metabolomics South Africa. At the start of his PhD project, he found it challenging to get researchers experienced in metabolomics at our core-facility; however, through the workshops and seminars organised by the Metabolomics South Africa, he managed to connect with other researchers at different levels of metabolomics training. Therefore, through EMN he is interested in organising webinars and training specifically targeted to suit MetSoc EMN and affiliate members in Africa to facilitate knowledge transfer. In addition, he hopes to create opportunities for collaborations between early career researchers in Africa and those in the developed parts of the world. Moreover, he intends to create opportunities for inter-Africa symposiums and meetings to create networks and possibilities for EMN members collaborations in Africa.

Diana Pinto

Diana Pinto

Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade do Porto
Portugal

Diana Pinto is a final year Ph.D. student graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Porto (FFUP) in 2016. She finished the Master in Quality Control in 2019 at FFUP. In 2019, she was awarded a Ph.D. scholarship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), attending the Doctoral Program in Sustainable Chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto (FCUP).

Her Ph.D. thesis is focused on the extraction of bioactive molecules and their validation as potential active ingredients for food and nutraceutical products by in-vitro and in-vivo assays towards the valorization of agro-industrial by-products. As part of her training, she enjoyed a doctoral stay at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety (INSA-UB), University of Barcelona, Spain, from January to July 2022 where she started her journey in the metabolomics field. Since January 2022, she has been working on targeted and untargeted metabolomic approaches coupled with data processing techniques for phytochemical characterization and analysis of complex matrices from cell-based assays and animal tissues treated with natural extracts rich in bioactive compounds.

Anza Ramabulana

Anza-Tshilidzi Ramabulana

University of Johannesburg
South Africa
Email

Anza-Tshilidzi Ramabulana is a South African who works as a laboratory technician at the University of Venda and is a PhD candidate at the University of Johannesburg. Her work primarily focuses on the use of mass spectrometry in metabolomics, particularly in the study of natural products and the analysis of large metabolomics data using computational tools. She also produces digital content for YouTube and Instagram.

Daniela Ramirez

Daniela Andrea Ramirez

CONICET-UNCuyo
Argentina

Daniela Andrea Ramirez is postdoctoral fellow working as a member of the Agri-Food Chromatography Laboratory (CONICET-UNCuyo) in Mendoza, Argentina. She has a PhD in Science and Technology, specialized on functional foods’ study, chemometrics, and analytical techniques development. She has particularly been interested in QSAR studies (quantitative structure-activity relationship) to predict oral bioavailability of bioactive compounds and to establish bioactivity assertions. Recently, she started using metabolomic tools to assess bioactive compounds pharmacokinetic parameters associated with dietary intervention trials. This last research comprehends an interdisciplinary approach and was part of an ERASMUS + mobility in participation with the AGR 274 “Bioactive Ingredients” group of the Department of Analytical Chemistry, at the University of Granada.

Currently, she is working on “ANALYTICAL AND CHEMOINFORMATICS STRATEGIES TO DEFINE QUALITY AND SAFETY ATTRIBUTES IN SEEDS AND MICROGREENS WITH FUNCTIONAL ATTRIBUTES”. She is using metabolomics along with other analytical resources to search for authenticity parameters so that seeds and horticultural products can be classified according to different production models.

Monique Ryan

Monique Ryan

Murdoch University
Australia

Monique is a graduate PhD student at the Australian National Phenome Centre and Murdoch University in Western Australia. Her research involves investigating the lipidomic changes in plasma post non-severe burn injury in adults and its impact on wound healing over a 6 week recovery period. Currently, she is one of the Mass Spectrometry Specialists situated at the ANPC with key skills in targeted and untargeted LC-MS workflows, LC-MS method development and data integration. Her main research focus is on non-severe burn injury in adults and children using mass spectrometry-based metabolomics, but is hoping to expand her skill set into NMR spectroscopy as well in the coming years. After graduating, she will be moving into an academic role at the ANPC mentored by Prof. Elaine Holmes and Prof. Fiona Wood to investigate the long-term metabolic consequences of burn trauma for children and how it relates to cardiometabolic issues later in life. 

Thomas Vial

Thomas Vial

Institut Pasteur
France

Dr. Thomas Vial is originally from France, where he completed his graduate studies. Subsequently, he embarked on a Ph.D. project that spanned Laos, France, and primarily Singapore, where he collaborated with Duke-NUS Medical School under the supervision of Dr. Garcia-Blanco and Dr. Julien Pompon from 2016 to 2020. His research during this period focused on investigating the impact of dengue virus infection on mosquito metabolome. Following the completion of his thesis, Dr. Vial spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where he worked on the replication complex of SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Vial is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut Pasteur since 2022, working within Louis Lambrechts’ lab and Sarh Merkling group. 

Currently, his research is centered on mosquito-virus interactions, with a specific emphasis on deciphering mosquito resistance mechanisms to dengue virus using multi-omics approaches, including metabolomics and single-cell RNA-seq. 

Simone Zuffa

Simone Zuffa

UC San Diego
USA

Simone Zuffa was born in Italy and got his BSc in Biotechnology at the University of Bologna. Following his passion for microbiome and metabolomics he moved first to The Netherlands, where he obtained a MSc in Medical Biotechnology, and then to the United Kingdom, where he got his PhD at Imperial College London on the impact of the early-life gut microbiota on human development. He is now a Postdoc at UC San Diego, working on discovering microbial molecules and their effect on human health using untargeted LC-MS/MS.

Laimdota Zizmare

Laimdota Zizmare

Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen
Germany
Email
LinkedIn
Twitter

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

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

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

Find more information about the lab here.

Koel Chaudhury

Koel Chaudhury

Indian Institute Of Technology Kharagpur
India
Email

Biography coming soon!

Fitri Amalia

Fitri Amalia

Osaka University
Japan
Email

Fitri obtained a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia. After working as a researcher in a start-up company for 8 months, she decided to pursue her education as a double-degree master’s student in biotechnology at Institut Teknologi Bandung and Osaka University. She has always been interested in food quality and technology and joined food metabolomics research team in Bioresource Engineering laboratory under Prof. Eiichiro Fukusaki supervision. After she finished her master’s study in both universities, she continued her study as a PhD student supported by MEXT Scholarship at Osaka University. She obtained her PhD in 2022 and is now working as Postdoctoral Researcher at the same university.

Caroline Johnson

Caroline Johnson

Yale School of Public Health
USA
Email

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

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

Jules Griffin

Jules Griffin

The Rowett Institute &
University of Aberdeen
UK
Email

  • Chair – International Affiliations Task Group

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.