SUMS-RAS 2026

Celebrating Foundations, Advancing Innovation

Tuesday, October 20th 2026

8:30 am - 4:00 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.

Register here

Project Pitch Competition

Call for abstracts!

The Project Pitch Competition invites students and postdoctoral scholars to give a brief 5-minute pitch on a research project they would like to complete using the resources available at SUMS. The successful participants will be given up to $1000 of funding to carry out their experiment at SUMS. Interested candidates should provide an abstract at the link below:

Submit abstract

SUMS-RAS 2026: Celebrating Foundations, Advancing Innovation

Time	Event:
8:45 AM	Breakfast & Welcome
9:00 AM	Project Pitch Competition
10:00 AM	Dr. Ryan Kelly \| Brigham Young University "Applying lessons learned from single-cell proteomics to samples of any size"
10:45 AM	Coffee Break and Exhibits
11:30 AM	Dr. Arianne Caudal \| Stanford CVI
12:00 PM	Lunch & Exhibits
1:00 PM	Dr. Michael MacCoss \| University of Washington
1:45 PM	Dr. Ying Ge \| University of Wisconsin "Advancing Top-Down Proteomics through Online 2D-LC and ExD"
2:30 PM	Coffee break and Exhibits
2:45 PM	Dr. Varun Gadkari \| University of Minnesota
3:30 PM	Project Pitch Awards
3:45 PM	Drinks and Reception

Introducing this year's speakers...

**Dr. Ryan Kelly**
*Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry*
*Brigham Young University*

Ryan Kelly is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Brigham Young University and he holds a joint appointment at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). He received his Ph.D. in 2005 from BYU and then spent 13 years at PNNL, first as a postdoctoral researcher and most recently as a Technical Group Manager and the Chief Technologist for the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) located at PNNL.

A central theme of Dr. Kelly’s research has been the development of new technological solutions for improved biochemical analyses, including mass spectrometry (MS)-based omics. To this end, his team has developed ultrasensitive electrospray ionization sources based on chemical etching techniques that enable improved stability in the nano and picoflow regime, multiplexed electrospray sources to extend nanoelectrospray performance to higher flow separations, ion optics for increased ion transmission to the mass analyzer, and ultrasensitive biochemical separations based on liquid chromatography (LC) and capillary electrophoresis. He is a named inventor on 11 issued and pending patents, several of which have been licensed and commercialized. Dr. Kelly’s work has been recognized with two R&D 100 Awards, a Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer and the 2019 Georges Guiochon Faculty Fellowship Award from the HPLC conference.

Most recently, Dr. Kelly’s efforts have focused on overcoming the losses and inefficiencies associated with sample isolation and processing of biological samples for MS-based proteomic analyses. To this end, his team recently developed nanoPOTS (Nanodroplet Processing in One pot for Trace Samples), a microfluidic platform based on robotic nanopipetting and microfabricated well plates, which has reduced total processing volumes from ~tens of microliters to ~200 nL, greatly reducing sample losses to surfaces and enhancing reaction kinetics. When combined with ultrasensitive LC/MS, nanoPOTS has enabled identification of >1000 proteins from single mammalian cells. Current efforts include broadly disseminating the nanoPOTS technology, adapting the platform to additional sample types and workflows, increasing the sensitivity and throughput of single cell proteomics measurements, and applying the technology to a wide range of biological applications.

**Dr. Arianne Caudal, PhD**
*Instructor at the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute*
*Stanford University*

Dr. Arianne Caudal is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Joseph Wu’s laboratory at the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. Her work is focused on how metabolism and protein interactions mediate various cardiovascular diseases. She is the recipient of the NIH F32 NRSA and American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship awards. Dr. Caudal received her B.S in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2014) and Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Washington (2021). Dr. Caudal conducted her Ph.D. training in Dr. Rong Tian’s laboratory and focused on mitochondrial metabolism and its role in cardiac health and disease.

**Dr. Ying Ge**
*Professor, Department of Chemistry*
*University of Wisconsin-Madison*

Dr. Ge was born in China. She attended Peking University for her undergraduate studies, where she studied chemistry. After graduating in 1997, Ge moved to the United States, where she joined Cornell University as a doctoral student. Here she started to work on mass spectrometry, using electron-capture dissociation to study proteins. She worked under the supervision of Tadhg Begley and Fred McLafferty. After completing her doctorate, Ge worked as a research scientist at Wyeth.

Her research aims to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying cardiovascular diseases via systems biology approaches featuring cutting-edge ultra high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS)-based comparative proteomics and metabolomics in conjunction with functional studies. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developed countries and is reaching epidemic proportions. Transformative insights from a holistic approach at the systems level have great potential to elucidate disease mechanisms and to develop new therapeutic treatments. Proteins and metabolites are important molecular entities of the cell downstream of genes. Hence in the post genomic era, proteomics and metabolomics (the large-scale global analysis of proteins and metabolites in a cell, organism, tissue, and biofluid) are essential for deciphering how molecules interact as a system and for understanding the functions of cellular systems in health and disease. However, there are tremendous challenges in proteomics and metabolomics due to the extreme complexity and dynamic nature of the proteome and metabolome. To address such challenges, her lab is developing novel ultra high-resolution MS-based top-down comparative proteomics and metabolomics platforms for systems biology studies with high efficiency, specificity, sensitivity, and reproducibility. They globally identify, characterize, and quantify intact proteins and metabolites extracted from tissues/cells/biofluids and reveal all changes in the proteome and metabolome in response to extrinsic and intrinsic stresses. Then, they employ these technology platforms to study cardiovascular diseases in conjunction with biochemical and physiological functional assays.

**Dr. Michael MacCoss,**
*Professor, Department of Genome Sciences*
*University of Washington*

Michael MacCoss has been working with mass spectrometry instrumentation since 1994. He became interested in biomedical applications during summer internships at Merck Research Laboratories in 1995 and 1996. In 2001, he completed a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry with Professor Dwight Matthews developing stable isotope and mass spectrometry methodologies for measuring human amino acid and protein metabolism. As a postdoctoral fellow with proteomics pioneer John R. Yates III at The Scripps Research Institute, Dr. MacCoss developed methodologies and software for characterizing post-translational modifications and quantitative analysis of complex protein mixtures.

Dr. MacCoss joined the University of Washington in 2004 as an Assistant Professor of Genome Sciences and was promoted to Professor in 2014. Recognizing that software was a major bottleneck limiting quantitative accuracy and reproducibility in proteomics, Dr. MacCoss established a software engineering effort with Brendan MacLean. This effort produced Skyline, a widely-adopted open-source platform for quantitative mass spectrometry that has become essential for workflows across the field, and Panorama, a web-based repository for mass spectrometry data sharing and collaboration. The laboratory’s software is noted for its robustness, versatility, extensive support, and user friendliness. The MacCoss lab has also contributed to key computational tools in the field through close collaborations, including but not limited to the development of Percolator with the Noble lab for semi-supervised learning of peptide identification and Comet with Jimmy Eng for sequence database searching. Throughout his career, Dr. MacCoss has been a strong advocate for mass spectrometry-based quantitative proteomics, championing the development and adoption of targeted proteomics and data-independent acquisition (DIA) methods to improve the rigor, reproducibility, and clinical relevance of protein measurements. Beyond software development, the MacCoss lab has made significant methodological advances in data-independent acquisition, targeted proteomics, sample preparation, and instrumentation, applied to aging, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and neurodegeneration.

**Dr. Varun Gadkari**
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry
University of Minnesota

The Gadkari Research Group seeks to bridge the gap between analytical and biological chemistry to make previously inaccessible biomolecular structural measurements. We develop innovative mass spectrometry-based structural biology techniques to make measurements of natively prepared nucleic acids, proteins, and their complexes. The group is particularly focused on studying these biomolecules in the context of neurodegenerative diseases, an area with the potential for high societal impact.

How to get in touch with the SUMS experts

Celebrating Foundations, Advancing Innovation

Project Pitch Competition

SUMS-RAS 2026: Celebrating Foundations, Advancing Innovation

Introducing this year's speakers...

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