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2023 SUMS-RAS

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Mass Spec: Episode XVIII - A New Hope 


Tuesday October 17, 2023
9 am - 3:30 pm
In person at the Stanford Health Care rooftop Assembly Hall

A free symposium for mass spectrometry users, researchers, and explorers! Join Stanford's mass spectrometry community in person to learn about exciting mass spec research and resources, and to build valuable connections with fellow scientists.

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Keynote Presentation

Livia Eberlin, PhD 
Associate Professor of Surgery, 
Baylor College of Medicine

Vision and innovations for improving human health via mass spectrometry

Dr. Livia Schiavinato Eberlin received a bachelor’s in chemistry from the State University of Campinas in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Purdue University. She went on to complete a research fellowship in the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University in California. Prior to joining Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Eberlin was an assistant professor in the Departments of Chemistry, Oncology and Diagnostic Medicine at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Eberlin and her research team are the recipients of many honors and awards for their scientific research, including a NIH/NCI K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, a Forbes 30 under 30 listing in the Healthcare category, a Moore Inventor Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2018. Her research group is funded by grants from the NIH, CPRIT and other research foundations. Additionally, Dr. Eberlin has published more than 80 peer-reviewed research articles in top-rated journals such as PNAS, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Communications, Cancer Research, and Clinical Chemistry. Dr. Eberlin’s research program centers around the development and application of novel mass spectrometry technologies in health-related research, with a particular focus on disease detection and diagnosis to improve patient care and clinical outcomes.

Introducing this year's presenters...

Alireza Abdolvahabi, PhD

AbbVie

Dr. Abdolvahabi holds the position of Senior Scientist at the Department of Local Delivery and Translational Sciences at Allergan/Abbvie, Irvine, California. He has been in this position since November 2021. In the current position, he oversees and manages mass spectrometry-based analytical workflows such as small molecule DMPK, targeted proteomics for protein quantitation, peptide mapping, protein conjugation as well as leading nonclinical teams. Before this, Dr. Abdolvahabi was the Director of Mass Spectrometry Core facility at USC School of Pharmacy. He received his PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Baylor University, TX and completed a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN.

Mike Angelo, MD, PhD

Associate Professor of Pathology

Stanford University School of Medicine

Michael Angelo, MD PhD is a board-certified pathologist and assistant professor in the department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Angelo is a leader in high dimensional imaging with expertise in tissue homeostasis, tumor immunology, and infectious disease. His lab has pioneered the construction and development of Multiplexed Ion Beam Imaging by time of flight (MIBI-TOF). MIBI-TOF uses secondary ion mass spectrometry and metal-tagged antibodies to achieve rapid, simultaneous imaging of dozens of proteins at subcellular resolution. In recognition of this achievement, Dr. Angelo received the NIH Director’s Early Independence award in 2014. His lab has since used this novel technology to discover previously unknown rule sets governing the spatial organization and cellular composition of immune, stromal, and tumor cells within the tumor microenvironment in triple negative breast cancer. These findings were found to be predictive of single cell expression of several immunotherapy drug targets and of 10-year overall survival. This effort has led to ongoing work aimed at elucidating structural mechanisms in the TME that promote recruitment of cancer associated fibroblasts, tumor associated macrophages, and extracellular matrix remodeling. Dr. Angelo is the recipient of the 2020 DOD Era of Hope Award and a principal investigator on multiple extramural awards from the National Cancer Institute, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Human Biomolecular Atlas (HuBMAP) initiative.

Meet the Career Panelists!

Lichao Zhang, PhD

EpiBiologics

Lichao obtained her PhD in 2014 from Professor Don Hunt's lab in University of Virginia where she worked on method development for peptide sequencing and post-translational modification characterization using mass spec. After graduate school she joined Professor Josh Elias' lab in Stanford and then the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, and worked on a variety of proteomics projects in collaboration with a few dozens of academic labs. She switched her career to the biotech industry in 2022. Now she is a principal scientist at EpiBiologics and helping out with the R&D of novel therapeutics using mass spec.

Catherine Going, PhD 

Merck

Catherine Going completed her undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Notre Dame.  She did her graduate research in mass spectrometry and analytical chemistry at UC Berkeley in the lab of Evan Williams, where she developed new methods for forming highly charged proteins, or "supercharging" methods.  From there, she came to Stanford for her postdoctoral studies in the lab of Sharon Pitteri at the Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection, where she focused on using proteomics to investigate the mechanism of action of novel chemotherapeutics and to discover novel biomarkers for cancers.  She has worked at several companies in industry, from a small start up of only nineteen people (Soteria Biotherapeutics), all the way up to a large global pharmaceutical company (Merck), where she is today.  She currently works in early discovery but also has experience in bioanalytics and CMC from her previous positions.  Outside of work, she and her husband have two daughters who are seven and four years old, so in her spare time, she mostly does arts and crafts, plays at the park, and watches lots of Disney princess movies with them. 

Neil Rumachik, PhD 

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Neil Rumachik is a Manager of Applications Development within the marketing division of the Ion Chromatography and Sample Preparation business unit at Thermo Fisher Scientific. Prior to joining the marketing team, Neil was a staff scientist in R&D at Thermo, where he developed new IC-MS products and workflows for the analysis of carbohydrates. Neil has spent most of his career developing cross-disciplinary methods and utilizing multi-omics platforms to study biology. With over a decade of experience working at the interface of chemistry and biology, Neil’s primary research interests lie in the application of chemistries and hyphenated mass spectrometry technologies for the characterization of biological samples. Before joining Thermo Fisher Scientific, Neil completed his graduate work in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University with Professor Carolyn Bertozzi. 

Kavya Swaminathan, PhD

Freenome

Kavya is a proteomics scientist who has been working on applying cutting edge proteomics and bioinformatics technologies to tackle complex immunological problems.Kavya’s doctoral and postdoctoral work focused on antigens driving infection and auto immune responses and harnessing the adaptive immune response to develop prophylactic and therapeutic interventions.In her current capacity as a senior scientist at Freenome, Kavya leads the Mass spec team towards detecting circulating protein biomarkers for early cancer detection. Simultaneously she enjoys mentoring junior scientists, evaluating new technologies, and deploying advanced mass spec and bioinformatics based approaches to support cross functional efforts.