Biography: 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. 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 investigate the sex-specific differences in metabolism that effect disease development and trajectory using metabolomics, specifically in the area of colorectal cancer. More recently she has incorporated an immunometabolism focus into her research in both cancer and COVID-19, to identify sex-specific metabolic indicators of immune response. Within her research, she is also continuously developing metabolomics technology and methodologies, including mass spectrometry imaging, to provide innovative tools for investigating metabolism. In addition to her research experience, she has been involved in the organization and chairing of multiple conferences, as well as training and teaching YSPH students and staff in metabolomics. Dr. Johnson also serves on the Editorial Boards for Metabolites and Toxicological Sciences.

Statement of Purpose: I am currently a member of the Metabolomics Society Board of Directors, running for a second term. Over the past two years I have actively participated in both the Conference and Membership Committees, and contributed to the development of our Society. I have actively helped to organize two Annual Metabolomics Society conferences, as well as organize bids for future conferences. I also recently initiated a set of guidelines for a Code of Conduct which will be implemented at our upcoming conferences, to help ensure a respectful and safe environment for our attendees and vendors. I volunteered to Chair the Membership Committee in 2019 to implement recommendations from the Society’s 2020-2025 Strategic Plan for Membership Retention and Expansion. I first populated our Committee with individuals from various regions to ensure geographical representation within the Committee. Then, as a Committee, we designed a list of questions to enable the collection and monitoring of demographic data during the membership registration process. This data will help us design initiatives that best serve the membership and allow us to track trends over time. In my second term, I will continue to contribute to the running of The Society, including my membership within the Conference Committee and Chair of the Membership Committee. I will work on increasing membership in geographical areas which are currently underrepresented such as Latin America and Africa. I will also identify initiatives to increase membership retention within our Society, and identify procedures to improve networking across the membership.

Biography: 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), a board member of the International Metabolomics Society, 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.

Statement of Purpose: If I am re-elected to the board of directors, my primary goal is to work to better the good of the metabolomics community at large. I will continue focusing on several of the tasks that I was involved in for the last two years, including the organization of our annual meeting, the establishment of the metabolomic epidemiology task force, among others. The emergence of COVID-19 has affected many of us as researchers and as a society overall. Our current board has worked hard to find viable solutions to continue to promote the society’s and member’s interests. Throughout the next two years, I will continue to work on the board to assure that our society thrives while also being keenly aware of particular needs of society members during this trying time. I will place particular focus on the changing needs from the pandemic as the continue to evolve. I also represent the growing community of epidemiologists who are interested in utilizing metabolomic data to study the etiology of complex diseases and work to continue to integrate this research group into the broader metabolomics community, capitalizing on the specific strengths of the various groups within the metabolomics community. I will work to promote the following objectives: 1) The use of metabolomics among the broader epidemiological community with well characterized cohorts and clinical trial data; 2) To educate the metabolomics community on a broad spectrum of analytic and statistical approaches that can be applied to metabolomics data; 3) To foster the growing interest in the accumulation and analysis of multi-omic data in well characterized cohorts; 4) To encourage collaborative relationships that foster better science among the diverse group of researchers within the metabolomics community; 5) To work to harmonize metabolomics across platforms, laboratories, and populations; and 6) To establish publicly available metabolomics data. If re-elected as a board member, I will commit myself to values stated above as I listed to society members and promote the success of the society over the next two years and through the continued added challenge that COVID-19 brings.

Biography: Dan Raftery is a Medical Education and Research Endowed Professor at the University of Washington, School of Medicine, and also Professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle WA, USA. Dr. Raftery received his PhD from UC Berkeley and was previously Professor of Chemistry in the Analytical Division at Purdue University, where his group started research in metabolomics in 2003. Dr. Raftery’s current research program is focused on the development of new analytical methods and their application to a range of clinical and basic science studies in metabolomics. His group uses advanced mass spectrometry and NMR methods for the identification of early biomarkers and metabolic risk factors for a number of cancers and other diseases, and for the exploration of systems biology in cells and mitochondria. Dr. Raftery was a pioneer in combining NMR and MS based metabolomics data for improved metabolome coverage and biomarker performance. He also has significant experience in biomarker development and validation efforts. Dr. Raftery founded and directs the Northwest Metabolomics Research Center at UW Medicine, and works with more than 60 research groups per year on a large variety of metabolomics studies. He is currently an Associate Editor of Analytical Chemistry, and an editorial board member of Metabolites and Current Metabolomics and Systems Biology.

Statement of Purpose: The field of metabolomics has expanded rapidly in a broad range of areas with great impact. As a member of the Society’s Membership Committee, I am committed to strengthening the Society’s efforts in recruiting new members, especially those from underrepresented groups including young members and regions of the world where metabolomics is expanding. As an experienced member of the Conference Committee, I will help the Society develop and provide successful international meetings even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I gained a great deal of experience as the chair of 2018 Society meeting in Seattle in developing conference planning and programming, industrial sponsorship, networking opportunities (especially for younger members), that I will continue to share with the Metabolomics Society Board. I am committed to help make future meetings even more successful in the years to come. Finally, given my broad background in analytical chemistry and my role in leading the Northwest Metabolomics Research Center, I have a breadth of experience to help the Society’s efforts to improve data quality and reliability, metabolome coverage, quantitation, and reporting, which have proven to be bottlenecks in metabolomics. As a member of the mQACC consortium focused on improving the quality of global metabolomics data and developing new reference materials, I believe such efforts will provide society members with information and tools to improve their metabolomics capabilities, studies and results. As a board member, I will continue to advocate the importance of these efforts to the rest of the board and the Society membership.

Biography: Ralf Weber is the Director of Bioinformatics for the Phenome Centre Birmingham at the University of Birmingham, UK. He obtained his BSc degree in Bioinformatics from the HAN University of Applied Sciences in Nijmegen, Netherlands. In 2007 he moved to the University of Birmingham where he completed a PhD in computational mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. He continued to work as a Research Fellow from 2010 – 2016 and was involved in a variety of clinical, toxicology and computational-focused research projects. During spring 2016 he was a visiting researcher at the School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. Currently, he is the module lead for the ‘omics’ science component of the MSc Bioinformatics course at the University of Birmingham. He is a co-founder of and trainer in the Birmingham Metabolomics Training Centre since 2015, a past committee member of the Early-career Members Network of the international Metabolomics Society from 2013 – 2016. His research team’s interests include the development and application of data processing, biostatistics and data mining tools to facilitate biochemical annotation and interpretation of clinical and toxicological metabolomics data.

Statement of Purpose: Building on my previous experience, including my last two years as a board member, I would like the opportunity to continue to serve the Metabolomics Society for another term. Firstly, recently I became the chair of the Website and Communications Committee. Having a strong and effective online presence is crucial for the growth of our Society. I would like to further progress and implement our current plans to improve and optimise the Society’s presence online. Secondly, I am very keen to continue my involvement in developing and organising upcoming conferences, in particular the upcoming Metabolomics 2020 online conference. A successful online conference would be a positive boost for the Society, which is much welcomed since it has been a challenging year for the Society due to the cancellation of the face-to-face conference in Shanghai. Thirdly, I am a strong supporter of standardisation and open data science across Metabolomics. I would like to further establish and advance the acceptance and implementation of these important topics in a collaborative spirit with other developers, international data repositories, and Task Groups of the Society. Finally, as a past committee and co-founding member of the Early-career Members Network (EMN) I would also like to continue to strongly support the EMN and its activities and plans, and help align them with the strategies of the Board. The EMN committees are doing a fantastic job and continue to be an important driver for the growth of our society.