KEYNOTE SPEAKERs

Session 1  
October 28 - 10:00 a.m. (Asia Pacific|Beijing)

Professor Nicholson obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School (King’s College), London University in 1980. After a series of academic appointments in the University of London he was appointed as Full Professor of Biological Chemistry in 1992 and subsequently Head of Biological Chemistry at Imperial College London in 1998 and after other appointments became head of the of the Department of Surgery and Cancer in 2009. In 2012 he founded and directed the MRC-NIHR National Phenome Centre (2012-2018) and became the Chairman of the International Phenome Centre Network in 2016. He was appointed as Pro-Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences at Murdoch University and to direct the new Australian National Phenome Center in 2018. Nicholson has authored over 800 papers and articles on spectroscopy, informatics, metabolic biochemistry, and systems medicine. His major research focus is on the development of diagnostic and prognostic molecular phenotyping and computational technologies as applied to problems in personalised healthcare, microbiome-host metabolic signalling, metabolic diseases and cancer. He is a Clarivate Highly-Cited Researcher (Clarivate H index = 129, Google H = 152). He has received several science prizes for his work including: Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Silver (1992) and Gold (1997) Medals for Analytical Chemistry; UK Chromatographic Society Jubilee Silver Medal (1994); Pfizer Prize for Chemical and Medicinal Technology (2002); RSC medal for Chemical Biology (2003); RSC Interdisciplinary Prize (2008); Pfizer Global Research Prize for Chemistry (2006); Semelweiss-Budapest International Prize for Biomedicine (2010). Professor Nicholson holds 12 honorary and adjunct professorships round the world. He was elected, Fellow of The Royal Academy of Medical Sciences in 2010; Honorary Lifetime Fellow of the International Metabolomics Society (2012); Honorary Lifetime Member of the US Society of Toxicology (2013); Albert Einstein Professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2014); Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (2018); Honorary Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa (Hong Kong Baptist University), in 2019. His current research is centred on the understanding the molecular effects of SARS CoV-2 infection and translational diagnostic and monitoring solutions for COVID-19.

Session 2
October 28 - 1:30 p.m. (Asia Pacific|Beijing) 

Session 3
October 28 - 10:00 a.m. (Europe|Paris)

Matej Orešič holds a PhD in biophysics from Cornell University (1999; Ithaca, NY, USA). He is a group leader in systems medicine at the University of Turku (Finland), associate professor at Örebro University (Sweden), and guest professor in lipids and nutrition at the Oil Crops Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Wuhan. As of 2016, he became a Lifetime Honorary Fellow of the Metabolomics Society. Prof.  Orešič is one of the founders of the Nordic Metabolomics Society and currently its chair of the board. In 2019, he co-chaired the 1^st Gordon Research Conference on ‘Metabolomics and Human Health’ (Ventura, CA). Main research areas of Prof. Orešič include 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 a 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.

Session 4 
October 28 - 2:00 p.m. (Europe|Paris)

Dr. María Eugenia Monge is an Independent Researcher of CONICET, the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina. In 2006, she obtained her Ph.D. in Inorganic, Analytical, and Physical Chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Between 2007 and 2014, she held postdoctoral positions at the Biophysical Institute of Palermo-CNR, Italy; at IRCELYON-CNRS, France; and at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. In 2014, she was recruited by CONICET to set-up a new laboratory at CIBION, a recently founded research center of CONICET, where she leads the Bioanalytical Mass Spectrometry (MS) Group (https://cibion.conicet.gov.ar/mass-spectrometry/?lan=en) and the MS facility. Her research group applies MS for biomarker discovery and early disease detection, with special emphasis on untargeted metabolomics-based diagnostics. The applications her group is currently working on include biomarker discovery studies for renal cell carcinoma and prostate cancer detection in collaboration with Argentine biobanking systems and hospitals. Her group is also involved in collaborative studies applying metabolomics workflows to address health-related scientific questions in the fields of cancer metabolism, molecular neurobiology, and dengue disease, using in vitro and in vivo models. As well, the Monge lab has participated in a H2020-MSCA-RISE network to investigate marine chemical environments with ambient MS-based untargeted metabolomics strategies. Her group is also developing free and open source tools for preprocessing LC-MS data for quality control procedures in untargeted metabolomics workflows. Dr. Monge is co-author of > 40 peer-reviewed publications (https://cibion.conicet.gov.ar/dra-monge-publications/?lan=en). Since her return to Argentina, Dr. Monge has coordinated metabolomics courses in CIBION for South American students, and has participated in promoting awareness of metabolomics and its advantages throughout Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia with the hope of broadening and strengthening the South American metabolomics community. Since 2019, she has been a member of the Metabolomics Society and the Metabolomics Quality Assurance and Quality Control Consortium (mQACC), where she participates on the Defining Best Practices working group; and she serves as a member of the Metabolomics Society Membership Committee. Dr. Monge also served as guest editor for the journal Metabolites; and she is an editorial board member of GigaByte. 

Corey Giles is an early career research scientist at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute (Melbourne, Australia). His passion and research interests lie in understanding the mechanisms through which lipid metabolism affects chronic diseases – including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. His career goals are to identify the metabolic pathways that play a causal role in disease aetiology. Utilising high-throughput lipidomics, Corey aims to profile tens of thousands of human plasma samples from a broad range of population- and clinical-cohorts. Integrating lipidomic data with existing genomic resources opens new avenues for defining lipid species and pathways causally associated with disease aetiology and progression. Supported by a dedicated and diverse research team – led by Professor Peter Meikle – Corey is developing and applying novel statistical techniques to a fast-growing collection of human lipidomes.

Prof Roessner has obtained her Diploma in Biochemistry at the University of Potsdam and the John Innes Institute in Norwich, UK after which she pursued a PhD in Plant Biochemistry at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Germany, where she developed novel GC-MS methods to analyse metabolites in plants. Together with the application of sophisticated data mining, the field of metabolomics was born and is today an important tool in biological sciences, systems biology and biomarker discovery. In 2003 she moved to Australia where she established a GC-MS and LC-MS based metabolomics platform as part of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics for which she led the node at the University of Melbourne. In addition, in 2007, Prof Roessner has been involved in the setup and lead of Metabolomics Australia (MA), a federal and state government funded national metabolomics service facility and led the MA node at the University of Melbourne until 2019. In 2013, Prof Roessner was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship to establish her own research program applying Imaging Mass Spectrometry for spatial metabolite and lipid analyses to understand root metabolism under salinity stress. Currently her research program uses metabolomics and lipidomics technologies to decipher how plant roots interact with beneficial microbes under abiotic stress conditions. In 2018, Prof Roessner took up the position as Head of School, School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne.

Eiichiro Fukusaki entered a private company, Nitto Denko Co, after receiving master’s degree from Osaka University in 1985.  He received PhD from Osaka University on 1993 through his company work. After ten years company experience, he returned back to Osaka University as an associate professor. In 2007 he has been assigned as a full professor in department of biotechnology, graduate school of engineering, Osaka University. Prof Eiichiro Fukusaki received several awards including; an Excellent Paper Award of the Society for Biotechnology, Japan [1993, 2003, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2015], the Japanese Society for Chemical Regulation of Plants Award for the Encouragement of Young Scientists. [2001]; the Society of Biotechnology, Japan ‘Saito’ Award [2004]; the Society of Biotechnology, Japan Achievement Award [2015]; Excellent Paper Award of Division of Chemical Information and Computer Science, The Chemical Society of Japan [2009]. He was assigned as a life-time honorary fellow of Metabolomics International Society [2019]. His current research interests are focusing on development and application of metabolomics technology. He has published over 300 original papers and 50 patents.  He is focusing on not only fundamental science but also practical application.  Particularly he facilitates research collaboration with private companies in the several fields including food, chemical, pharmaceutical, analytical etc.  He is also energetically promoting international education and research collaboration.  Recently he has participated double degree program in graduated school level between Osaka University and several foreign universities.

Erin S. Baker is an Associate Professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. To date, she has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers utilizing ion mobility spectrometry in conjunction with mass spectrometry (IMS-MS) to study both environmental and biological systems. Erin has served on the ASMS Board of Directors as the Member at Large for Education and is currently serving as the Vice President of Education for the International Lipidomics Society, Events Committee Chair for Females in Mass Spectrometry (FeMS) and as an Associate Director in the NCSU Comparative Medicine Institute. She is also the Contributing Editor for Trends in Analytical Chemistry as well as on the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports, Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and Clinical Mass Spectrometry. She has received seven US patents, two R&D 100 Awards, been named to the Analytical Scientist 2019 Top 100 Power List, aided in the commercialization of the Agilent 6560 IMS-QTOF MS, and was a recipient of the 2016 ACS Rising Star Award for Top Midcareer Women Chemists. The Baker research group utilizes advanced separations, multi-omic analyses and big data assessments to drive innovative mass spectrometry technologies, systems biology evaluations, novel software capabilities and connections between human health and the environment.