Leila Birolo is an associate professor in Biochemistry at the University of Naples Federico II. Her scientific activity is focused on the application of proteomics to cultural heritage, and more widely, on organic components in artistic and archaeological objects. This interest came as a natural evolution in her track as chemist that explored different aspects of protein chemistry to the challenging task of studying ancient proteins in cultural heritage. Focuses are the development of tools for minimally invasive identification of proteins and the search of aging biomarkers in ancient proteins. She published several papers on proteomics applied to cultural heritage, received fundings and presented her works at national and international conferences.
Sebastian Böcker holds the Chair for Bioinformatics at the Institute for Computer Science, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. He studied mathematics and did his PhD in biomathematics at Bielefeld University, focusing on theoretical phylogenetics. He then went to industry for three years, developing computational methods for the interpretation of DNA/RNA mass spectrometry data. He returned to Bielefeld University as an independent research leader, before he took up his current position in Jena. His research interests are mainly method-driven and were originally focussed on combinatorics and algorithmics; later, stochastics and machine learning joined the methods of interest. On the application side, his research focuses on the annotation of small molecules from mass spectrometry data; in 2020, SIRIUS 4 from his group was named "method to watch" by Nature Methods. Sebastian Böcker is a Emmy Noether fellow (Computer Science Action Program) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and also a fellow of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Society. In 2022, he and his group won the Thuringian Research prize.
Current title and position Dr. Sarah CIANFERANI is a research director at the CNRS and co-heads the BioOrganic Mass Spectrometry Laboratory (LSMBO) in Strasbourg, a team of 40 people that has strong expertise in proteomic analyses and structural mass spectrometry. Her group is part of the French National Proteomic Infrastructure ProFI. Research field Her expertise focuses on method developments in structural mass spectrometry (mainly native MS, ion mobility MS, H/D exchange MS and cross-linking MS) and applications for multiprotein complex characterization in structural biology projects, membrane proteins and biotherapeutics. Education and former professional experience Dr. Sarah Cianférani holds a PhD degree in analytical chemistry from the University of Strasbourg, France. She performed and post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Genetics and Molecular Biology (IGBMC) in Strasbourg to gain expertise in structural biology. She then joined the AliX company to develop native Mass Spectrometry for protein/ligand screening. She was recruited by the CNRS as researcher in 2004 in the team of Alain Van Dorsselaer (BioOrganic Mass Spectrometry Lab, LSMBO) in Strasbourg. She is co-author of more than 280 scientific papers related to mass spectrometry analysis of proteins and their complexes. She was awarded in 2023 the Gold Medal from the French Proteomic Society.
Scientific: Maarten Dhaenens received a Master’s degree in Zoology from Ghent University, Belgium, in 2002, where he was chasing East-African millipedes for his master’s dissertation. Following an additional masters in Medical Molecular Biotechnology, he joined the lab of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology where he first encountered mass spectrometry and later became executive principle investigator of the proteomics department when he finished his PhD in 2011. The lab has since focused on the mass spectrometry-based study of histone epigenetic dynamics, the so-called “histone code”, with a special interest in data-independent acquisition (DIA) MS on QTOF designs since 2013. The Sars-Cov-2 outbreak abruptly introduced a new research line, developing an MS-based diagnostic assay that detects Sars-Cov-2 proteins in patients which received the EuPA Breakthrough in Proteomics award in 2021. Returning to his zoology foundation, he is increasingly trying to understand the role of histone epigenetics in Eukaryotes. Profile: In 2017 he founded ProGenTomics, a proteomics service lab specialized in histone analysis, which became the official proteomics core facility of Ghent University in 2023. Maarten was founding president of the European Young Proteomics Investigators Club (YPIC) in 2016 and became president of the Belgian Proteomics Association (BePA) in 2018. This year, he resigned from the latter and became chair of the executive committee for Industry at EuPA.
Alexander Makarov obtained his PhD from the Moscow Engineering Physics institute in 1992. In 1996 he embarked on pioneering work on the Orbitrap mass analyzer at HD Technologies Ltd, a small company based in Manchester, UK. After its acquisition by Thermo Electron in 2000, Alexander spearheaded development of the Orbitrap analyzer from first prototypes to the commercial launch of the LTQ Orbitrap instrument in 2005. Under his guidance, the Orbitrap technology expanded to encompass five major families of commercial instruments. He also provided scientific leadership of the Astral analyzer development as well as technologies for high-mass analysis. His awards include the Award for Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry from ASMS, the Aston medal by BMSS and the Thomson medal from IMSF. Presently, he is Director of Research at the Life Science Mass Spectrometry Business Unit of Thermo Fisher Scientific in Bremen, Germany and a Fellow of the Royal Society in the UK.
Since 35 years at the IMP (institute of molecular pathology) which is the basic research institute of boehringer Ingelheim. IMP works in close cooperation with IMBA and GMI (both institutes of the Austrian academy of science). From 2000 – 2022 Head of the Protein Chemistry Facility Since 2023 Head of the Proteomics TechHub FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS 2004: Lower Austrian Science Award 2010: Outstanding Scientist Technology Award from the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF), US 2021: Lifetime Award of the Austrian Proteomics and Metabolomics Society 2021: Prof. (h.c.) of the Austrian Proteomics and Metabolomics Association (APMA) 2023: Juan Pablo Award of the European Proteomics Society SELECTED MEMBERSHIPS Chairmen of Proteomics Core4Life (Excellence Alliance of European Core Facilities) 2014 - 2021 Founding member of the European Proteomics Academy 2014 – 2019: Coordinator of the Education Committee of the European Proteomics Association 2011 – 2015: Elected President of the Austrian Proteomics Society 2007 – 2012: The Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities – Leading member of the Proteomics Standard Initiative
Our group is interested in understanding how tumors tame the microenvironment to facilitate growth and spreading. We decided to tackle the aggressive-tumor microenvironment from a global, untargeted, -omic, point of view, as this is representative of what happens in vivo where multiple signals are simultaneously conveyed and used to establish a functional tumor-microenvironment crosstalk. Our research is aimed at uncovering mechanisms of tumor-host cells-ECM interaction that could not only represent novel drug targets but would also contribute to the development of less invasive diagnostic and prognostic clinical readouts. To achieve this task we are developing and applying new technologies in the field of mass spectrometry-based proteomics and metabolomics.
Céline Henry has been a research engineer in mass spectrometry for more than 24 years at INRAE (Jouy en Josas, France). She is the technical head manager of the proteomics platform PAPPSO (Plateforme d'Analyses de Protéomique de Paris Sud Ouest, http://pappso.inrae.fr/) which is composed of 10 permanent staff (mass spectrometry analysts, bioinformaticians and statisticians). This platform is part of the Micalis Institute, which brings together more than 350 microbiologists, most of whom are involved in microbiota studies related to health or nutrition. She has been involved in metaproteomics projects for over 10 years, particularly focusing on the human intestinal microbiota in chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, and more recently on characterizations of vesicles derived from human feces related to Crohn's disease. She was recently first author of a paper on the study Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (Henry et al, https://doi.org/10.3390/cells11081340). She is also member of Metaproteomic initiative (https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-021-01176-w) and participate to Critical Assessment of MetaProteome Investigation (CAMPI) (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27542-8).
Short CV – Carla Schmidt 2001-2006 : Studies of Chemistry, Leipzig University, Germany 2006-2010 : PhD student, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany 2010-2011 : Postdoc, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany 2011-2015 : Postdoc, University of Oxford, United Kingdom 2016-2022 : Young investigator group leader and junior professor, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany 2022-present : Associate professor in Biochemistry, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany