Invited Speakers


Sunday, 23 February

Opening Plenary Session
18:00-19:00
Kojo Elenitoba-Johnson

Kojo Elenitoba-Johnson

Kojo Elenitoba-Johnson


Dr. Elenitoba-Johnson is the inaugural Chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, James Ewing Alumni Chair of Pathology, and Member of the Human Oncology & Pathogenesis Program (HOPP) at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Prior to this appointment, he was the Director of the Center of Personalized Diagnostics, and the inaugural Peter C. Nowell, M.D., Endowed Professor, in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Penn Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania from 2015 to August 2022. He is a recognized pioneer in lymphoma proteomics, and a top leader in precision and integrated diagnostics. His work is notable for the identification and mechanistic elucidation of targetable genetic alterations underlying the pathogenesis of specific lymphoma subtypes. Dr. Elenitoba-Johnson has contributed to over 180 peer-reviewed manuscripts, numerous chapters and text books. His research is supported by 3 RO1 awards from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Elenitoba-Johnson is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the International Lymphoma Study Group. (2017) and has been recognized with numerous professional honors and awards, notably the Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award from the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, the Outstanding Investigator (Former Warner-Lambert-Parke Davis) Award from the American Society for Investigative Pathology and the William Gerald Award from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.


Monday, 24 February

Donald F. Hunt Distinguished Contribution in Proteomics Award Plenary Session
8:30-9:05
Joshua Coon

Joshua Coon

Professor
University of Wisconsin-Madison
United States

Joshua Coon


Josh Coon grew up in rural Michigan, where he enjoyed fly fishing and woodworking, even building several riverboats during high school and college. His interest in Analytical Chemistry stemmed from a love of building, not boats, but chemical instrumentation. To escape the cold, he joined the Chemistry graduate program at the University of Florida. After graduating in 2002, he moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, to join Professor Don Hunt's lab, where he co-invented electron transfer dissociation (ETD). In 2005, Coon moved to Wisconsin as an Assistant Professor. He currently holds the Thomas and Margaret Pyle Chair at the Morgridge Institute for Research and is a Professor of Chemistry and Biomolecular Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His program specializes in developing and applying novel chemical instrumentation and molecular analysis methodologies. The team uses these technologies for studies ranging from basic biochemical questions in model organisms to translational work in human subjects. To date, he has published nearly 400 peer-reviewed manuscripts, which have collectively received over 35,000 citations. His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Distinguished Achievement in Proteomic Sciences Award (Human Proteome Organization), the H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship (UW-Madison), the Biemann Medal (American Society for Mass Spectrometry), the Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award (Pittcon Society), the Ken Standing Award (University of Manitoba), and the ACS Chemical Instrumentation Award, among many others. Coon has mentored over 40 Ph.D. graduates and around 15 postdoctoral scholars, many of whom are now faculty members at top academic institutions or leaders in industry.

Parallel Session 01: New Discoveries in Molecular Metabolism
9:15-10:35
Laura Cox

Laura Cox

Professor
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
United States

Laura Cox


The focus of my research is understanding the impact of maternal under-nutrition and maternal obesity during pregnancy on offspring cardiovascular health and aging using genomic and other omic methods. In recent work, my research group is using integrated "omic" approaches to better understand molecular networks underlying cardiovascular health and to identify molecules dysregulated in these networks prior to onset of clinical measures indicative of cardiovascular disease.

Parallel Session 02: (Pre-)clinical Proteomics - From Pre-Phase 1 to Phase 3
9:15-10:35
Forest White

Forest White

Forest White


Forest White is a Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received Ph.D. from Florida State University, completed a post-doc at the University of Virginia, and then joined MDS Proteomics where he developed phosphoproteomics capabilities in the company. In 2003 he joined the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT. Research in his lab is focused on quantification of protein phosphorylation-mediated signaling networks and MHC peptide presentation in normal and pathophysiological conditions. Applications include novel drug target discovery in glioblastoma, melanoma, and triple negative breast cancer, as well as analysis of mechanisms underlying therapeutic resistance and metastasis. Forest is a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.

Parallel Session 03: Neuroproteomics
11:00-12:20
Tara Tracy

Tara Tracy

Assistant Professor
Buck Institute for Research on Aging
United States

Tara Tracy


Dr. Tracy received her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley where she studied synapse development. During her postdoctoral training at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Tracy investigated the toxic mechanisms that drive neuron dysfunction and cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Tracy's laboratory at the Buck Institute is investigating the synapse dysfunction in the brain that causes cognitive decline in aging and in neurodegenerative diseases. Research from the Tracy laboratory has uncovered a synapse repair mechanism that promotes resilience to tauopathy-related memory loss. In 2022, Dr. Tracy was awarded the McKnight Brain Research Foundation Innovator Award in Cognitive Aging & Memory Loss from the American Federation of Aging Research.

Parallel Session 04: Proteomics Meets Pharma: Compound, Phenotypic and MoA Screens
11:00-12:20
Jarrod Marto

Jarrod Marto

Principal Investigator and Professor
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School
United States

Jarrod Marto


Jarrod Marto, Ph.D., is a Principal Investigator at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the Department of Cancer Biology and an Associate Professor of Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Since 2006 Dr. Marto has served as Director of the Blais Proteomics Center at Dana-Farber and more recently launched the Center for Emergent Drug Targets. Dr. Marto's research is focused on the development and use of state-of-the-art mass spectrometry and other bioanalytical techniques to understand how genomic alterations as well as the activity of chemical probes or clinical drugs manifest at the level of individual proteins, signaling pathways, or other compartments throughout the functional proteome. Dr. Marto has authored 200 peer-reviewed papers across the fields of bioanalytical chemistry, scientific instrumentation, mass-informatics, chemical biology, and cancer cell signaling. In addition, he is a founding member of Entact Bio and serves on the SAB of 908 Devices.

Parallel Session 05: Protein Networks - From Signaling to Interactions
13:40-15:00
David Gordon

David Gordon

Emory University
United States

David Gordon


Coming Soon!

Parallel Session 06: High Throughput Proteomics - Tackling 1000+ Samples
13:40-15:00
Roman Fischer

Roman Fischer

Principal Investigator and Associate Professor
University of Oxford
United Kingdom

Roman Fischer


Roman Fischer is an associate professor at the Target Discovery Institute (TDI) and Centre of Medicines' Discovery (CMD) at the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford. He leads 2 proteomics focussed laboratories: the Discovery Proteomics Facility (DisPro, Academic Lead) and the Clinical Proteomics Group (CPG, Principal Investigator). DisPro engages in fundamental research collaborations involving protein-protein interactions, deep proteomes and PTM analysis using top end proteomics equipment (Orbitrap Astral, Orbitrap Ascend, TimsTOF HT, Q-Exactive). In the Clinical Research Group, RF focusses on own research interests covering the technology driven disciplines of spatial and single cell proteomics as well as high-throughput proteomics. The dedicated lab uses a TimsTOF Ultra 2, TimsTOF Flex, Leica LMD7, Leica Mica and CellenOne to develop specific workflows to address spatial proteome organisation in pathology, with a focus on cancer and its triggered immune response in specific cell compartments of the immune system. RF has published >250 peer reviewed manuscripts, which acquired >14000 citations (h-index 63) and is an established leader in the field of proteomics with >20 years of experience in this area. DisPro and CPG have links to all major hospitals in Oxford and long-standing collaborations with most departments across the University, facilitating close interaction and collaboration with clinical PIs with access to study and trial samples.


Tuesday, 25 February

Robert J. Cotter New Investigator Award Plenary Session
8:30-9:05
Jesse Meyer

Jesse Meyer

Jesse Meyer


Jesse G. Meyer is an Assistant Professor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. After earning a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Minnesota, he pursued a PhD in Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, where he focused on fundamental improvements to increase proteomic sequence coverage. His postdoctoral research at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, supported by an NIH T32 training grant, honed his skills in proteomics applied to aging and metabolism research. Subsequently, his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, funded by an NLM T15 training grant, deepened his expertise in data science. Recognized for his research contributions, Meyer was named a Rising Star in Proteomics and Metabolomics by the Journal of Proteome Research in 2021 and received the ASMS Research Award in 2023. His research group is dedicated to understanding the molecular basis of age-related diseases, such as sarcopenia and Alzheimer's disease, with the goal of developing innovative therapies.

Parallel Session 07: Proteomics Beyond Mass Spectrometry
9:15-10:35
Zsu-Zsu  Chen

Zsu-Zsu Chen

Zsu-Zsu Chen


Zsu-Zsu Chen is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). She received her M.D. from the Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and her M.P.H. at the T. H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health while completing her post-doctoral research training in the lab of Dr. Robert E. Gerszten. Her research focuses on leveraging multiomics profiling and integration in human cohort studies to identify biomarkers of type 2 diabetes that will improve disease diagnosis, prognostication, and provide insights into disease pathophysiology.

Parallel Session 08: Biofluids, Secretomes, and Extracellular Vesicles
9:15-10:35
Elena Aikawa

Elena Aikawa

Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
United States

Elena Aikawa


Dr. Elena Aikawa is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Naoki Miwa Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She also serves as the Founding Director of the Heart Valve Translational Research Program, Head of Cardiovascular Life Sciences, and Co-director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular Sciences (CICS). Dr. Aikawa's research focuses on the development of new therapies to prevent and treat calcific aortic valve stenosis, a disease for which valve replacement remains the only treatment option. Early in her career, she pioneered the discovery of early pre-calcific changes in aortic valves that lead to aortic stenosis. More recently, she has developed a detailed map of proteomic changes in human calcifying valve layers, linking basic scientific findings to advanced imaging for early detection and preventive treatment. Dr. Aikawa also served as Chair of the ATVB Women's Leadership Committee of the American Heart Association until 2022 and was the first female President of the International Society for Applied Cardiovascular Biology (ISACB) from 2016 to 2021. To honor her outstanding mentorship, the ISACB recently established the "Elena Aikawa Trailblazer Award", recognizing women who have made significant contributions to applied cardiovascular research. Most recently, Dr. Aikawa has been selected as a Fellow in the 2024-2025 Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program, a prestigious nationwide fellowship for women faculty.

Parallel Session 09: ECR Session: Down in the Dumps: Treasure from Troubleshooting
11:00-12:20
Ryan Julian

Ryan Julian

UC Riverside

Ryan Julian


Ryan Julian is a professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Riverside, where he leads a mass spectrometry research group. Dr. Julian obtained his PhD in 2003 at Caltech under the guidance of Jack Beauchamp, focusing on a variety of molecular recognition and ion chemistry projects. He pursued postdoctoral training for two years focused on instrumentation and ion mobility with David Clemmer and Martin Jarrold at Indiana University. Since 2005 in his own lab at UCR, research interests have spanned a broad range of subjects including gas-phase ion chemistry, radical-directed dissociation, antioxidant capacity, and the development of a variety of MS-based structural tools. Most recently, a particular interest in the study of isomerization in long-lived proteins and how these modifications relate to age-related diseases has become a major focus.

Parallel Session 10: Proteomics in Biopharm Drug Development
11:00-12:20
Abraham Lenhoff

Abraham Lenhoff

Allan P. Colburn Professor
University of Delaware
United States

Abraham Lenhoff


Abraham Lenhoff is the Allan P. Colburn Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware, where he has been on the faculty since 1984 and was Chair from 2012-7. He earned a Bachelor's degree from the University of Cape Town and Master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin, all in chemical engineering. His research is primarily on application of principles of thermodynamics, transport phenomena, biophysics and colloid science to protein separations and phase behavior.

Parallel Session 11: Emerging Opportunities in Proteomics (outside the box)
13:40-15:00
Birgit Schilling

Birgit Schilling

Birgit Schilling


Dr. Birgit Schilling is a professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in the San Francisco Bay Area. She also is the Director of the Mass Spectrometry Technology Center at the Buck Institute, specifically focusing on data-independent acquisition technologies and large-scale proteome quantification. Dr. Schilling received her PhD in Germany, and subsequently worked at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) as postdoctoral fellow.

Parallel Session 12: Proteomics Beyond the Primary Protein Structure
13:40-15:00
Lan Huang

Lan Huang

Professor
University of California, Irvine
United States

Lan Huang


Dr. Lan Huang is Professor of Physiology & Biophysics in the School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on developing novel, integrated mass spectrometry-based proteomic strategies to characterize macromolecular protein complexes and understand their functions, particularly those in the ubiquitin-proteasome system. During the last two decades, the Huang lab has developed a number of novel methodologies to capture, purify and quantify protein-protein interactions in living cells. She has pioneered the development of sulfoxide-containing MS-cleavable cross-linkers, and thus established a robust cross-linking mass spectrometry (XL-MS) platform that enables the elucidation of interaction networks and structural topologies of native proteomes in vitro and in vivo. The strategies developed by her group have proven highly effective as general proteomic tools for studying protein-protein interactions and protein complexes. She has successfully translated her research findings into practical applications, receiving several patents and commercializing reagents that have made a substantial impact in the scientific community. Her lab has recently applied XL-MS technologies to clinical samples to understand protein network biology and its association with human disease.


Wednesday, 26 February

Gilbert S. Omenn Computational Proteomics Award Lecture
8:30-9:05
David Fenyo

David Fenyo

David Fenyo


Dr. David Fenyö received a PhD in Physics from Uppsala University in Sweden. After switching to computational biology, he did a postdoc at the Rockefeller University, co-founded a bioinformatics company and worked at GE Healthcare. He has over 35 years of experience with all aspects of biomedical data analysis in both academia and industry and his work has resulted in over 250 scientific publications. In 2010 he joined NYU School of Medicine where he is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Director for the Ph.D. program in Computational Biomedicine and the Master's program in Biomedical Informatics. His research focuses on applying data science methods to analyze quantitative data and to model biological systems. His efforts to integrate data from multiple technologies-including mass spectrometry, sequencing, and microscopy-have provided a wide array of powerful tools to discover and verify biomarkers and therapeutic targets in cancer.

Parallel Session 13: Proteoforms and PTMs in Health and Disease: From Discovery to Therapeutics
9:15-10:35
Ljiljana Pasa-Tolic

Ljiljana Pasa-Tolic

Ljiljana Pasa-Tolic


Ljiljana (Lili) Paša-Tolić received her PhD in Chemistry at the University of Zagreb in Croatia, was a postdoctoral fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and visiting scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Today she is a Laboratory Fellow and Lead Scientist at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) located at PNNL. She is known for her pioneering contributions to mass spectrometry, high-throughput, and top-down proteomics, including the development of transformative instrumentation and methods for biological and environmental research. Dr. Paša-Tolić has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications; organized several conferences, workshops, symposia, and schools focused on various aspects of analytical chemistry, omics, and mass spectrometry; and served at numerous editorial and advisory committees. She was a founding organizer to the worldwide Consortium for Top-Down Proteomics (CTDP), a nonprofit corporation that works toward the goal of accelerating "the comprehensive analysis of intact proteins and their complexes" and is currently serving on the CTDP Board. She was elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences (WSAS) in 2021 and is currently serving on the WSAS Board. Dr. Paša-Tolić was recently honored in the 2024 Analytical Sciences Power List as an instrumental innovator and as the 2024 recipient of the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation's Jochen Franzen Award for "outstanding contributions to innovations in structural, spatial and/or separation analysis with mass spectrometry".

Parallel Session 14: Computational Proteomics: Adding Value to Proteomics Data with or without AI
9:15-10:35
Nuno  Bandeira

Nuno Bandeira

Nuno Bandeira


The Bandeira Lab research at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) focuses on the development of algorithms and big data computational platforms for community-driven consensus interpretation of mass spectrometry data in proteomics, small molecules and therapeutic drug discovery. While the drive towards data sharing has already led to the accumulation of petabytes of mass spectrometry data in tens of thousands of datasets, the unfortunate reality is that only a very small percentage of all raw data has any reusable annotations with even minimal statistical controls. We propose to address this challenge by combining systematic reanalysis with crowdsourced platforms linking public data directly to research data, thereby engaging the whole community in the determination of consensus interpretation of the data - the main vision underlying the foundations of our global mass spectrometry data sharing platforms MassIVE (focused on proteomics data) and GNPS (focused on metabolomics and natural products data). To date, this process has already revealed hundreds of novel proteins, thousands of novel post-translational modified peptides and has increased dataset annotations by several fold. Professor Nuno Bandeira was awarded the ASMS Biemann medal and the US HUPO Gilbert S. Omenn Computational Proteomics Award, and currently holds a joint appointment at the UCSD Department of Computer Science and Engineering and at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy, as well as the Executive Director of the Center for Computational Mass Spectrometry.

Catherine E. Costello Award for Exemplary Achievements in Proteomics Plenary Session, US HUPO Business Meeting and Closing Remarks
11:00-12:30
Ileana  Cristea

Ileana Cristea

Henry L. Hillman Professor of Molecular Biology
Princeton University
United States

Ileana Cristea


Ileana Cristea is the Henry L. Hillman Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. Her laboratory investigates host cell responses to human viral pathogens. She has been at the forefront of bridging developments in mass spectrometry-based proteomics to important findings in virology. Her laboratory has contributed to the emergence of the field of nuclear DNA sensing in immune response, has defined organelle remodeling events during viral infections, has described the first characterization of a virus microenvironment, and has discovered antiviral factors for therapeutic intervention. Dr. Cristea is the Editor-in-Chief oof Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. She is a former President of the American Human Proteome Organization (US HUPO), a past Chair of the Biology/Disease-driven Human Proteome Project (B/D-HPP) of HUPO, and the Chair of the Infectious Disease team of HUPO B/D-HPP. She has taught the summer Proteomics Course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for over ten years. She was recognized with the Bordoli Prize from the British Mass Spectrometry Society, NIDA Avant-Garde Award for HIV/AIDS Research, Human Frontiers Science Program Young Investigator Award, ACS Early Career Award in Mass Spectrometry, ASMS Research Award, Molecular Cellular Proteomics Lectureship, Mallinckrodt Scholar Award, HUPO Discovery Award in Proteomic Sciences, Princeton University Graduate Mentoring Award, the NIH WALS Lectureship, and the Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator Award.