Fiona Brinkman is a Distinguished Professor at Simon Fraser University in Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Health Sciences, and Computing Science, and is most known for R&D of widely used software that aids integrative analyses of microbe and human genomics/transcriptomics data. She’s applied these tools to gain diverse insights into pathogen evolution, factors associated with health, and environmental microbiome applications. She has a strong interest in bioinformatics education/mentoring and developing holistic, health-focused disease control approaches. She is on several Boards/committees, including the Scientific Advisory Boards of ELIXIR and the European Nucleotide Archive, and recently Co-Chaired a Pan-Canadian Cohorts Working Group. A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, her awards include a TR100 award from MIT and Thompson Reuters “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds”.

Dr. Leonard Foster is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He studied biochemistry at Simon Fraser University for his Bachelors then moved to the University of Toronto to complete a doctoral degree in cell biology and biochemistry with Amira Klip. From there he went to the University of Southern Denmark to study mass spectrometry and proteomics with Matthias Mann. In 2005 he took up his current position at UBC. Initially focusing on proteomics and then expanding into other areas of systems biology, Dr. Foster’s research interests revolve around the application of mass spectrometry-based methods to study host-pathogen interactions and disease mechanisms. He is also known for his research in honey bees, particularly for understanding the mechanisms of disease resistance and using this knowledge to try to guide selective breeding in this important insect. Dr. Foster has trained more than 100 personnel, many of whom have gone on to work in biotech or the healthcare system in various applications of mass spectrometry.

Dr. James R. Heath is President and Professor at Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. Heath also has Affiliate Faculty appointments at the University of Washington Bioengineering, Physics and Chemistry departments. Formerly, he was the Elizabeth W. Gilloon Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, Professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA, and served as co-director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at UCLA.

Heath has had a profound impact on ISB since taking over leadership in 2018. He continues to make important discoveries in the field of cancer immunotherapy, and in 2022 was selected to lead a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center to study sequential targeted inhibitors and immunotherapies.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Heath quickly pivoted the focus of his lab and collaboratively worked with others within and beyond ISB to uncover secrets behind COVID-19 and long COVID. He published research that has changed how COVID-19 and long COVID is understood, and leads the Pacific Northwest consortium of the NIH-funded RECOVER study, which aims to understand the long-term effects of COVID.

Heath received his PhD in 1988 from Rice University, where he was the principal graduate student involved in the discovery of C60 and the fullerenes. He was a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley before joining the research staff at IBM Watson Labs in 1991. He took a faculty position at UCLA in 1994, and moved to Caltech in 2003.

He has received several awards and honors, including the Irving Weinstein Award from the American Association of Cancer Researchers, and the Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences. In 2009, he was named one of the top seven innovators in the world by Forbes Magazine.

 Heath has founded or co-founded several companies, including BioAnalytica, PACT Pharma (acquired by AmplifyBio in 2023), Integrated Diagnostics (acquired by Biodesix in 2018), Indi Molecular (acquired by Regeneron in 2022), CTI Molecular Imaging (acquired by Siemens in 2005), Sofie Biosciences, Isoplexis (acquired by Berkeley Lights in 2023), and NanoSys (acquired by Shoei in 2023).

Christoph Borchers, PhD, Director of the SCPC. Dr. Borchers is a Professor in the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology at the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish general Hospital at McGill University, and holds the Segal McGill Chair in Molecular Oncology. He became a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2013 and the Life Sciences BC Award/Genome BC Award for Scientific Excellence in 2016. His research encompasses structural and quantitative proteomics as well as quantitative metabolomics, with a clear focus on clinical applications and translation. Dr. Borchers’ lab has developed targeted mass spectrometry assays for the ‘absolute’ quantitation of thousands of proteins from cells, tissues, and biofluids, including members of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway and the PD-L1 signaling axis. He furthermore developed MS assays to determine mutation rates of known cancer drivers in tumor tissues on the protein level, and to determine the concentration of immune-therapeutics in patient blood, for therapeutic drug monitoring. The targeted MS assays developed in the Borchers lab are being used both for fundamental research and to complement existing genomic assays in precision oncology. Dr. Borchers has over 325 publications in mass-spectrometry based proteomics, with an H-index of 74 and more than 23,000 citations.

Philip Britz-McKibbin received his PhD in analytical chemistry (2000) from the University of British Columbia under the supervision of David D. Y. Chen, followed by a Japan Society for Promotion of Sciencepost-doctoral research fellowship in the renowned group of Shigeru Terabe at Himeji Institute of Technology (2001-2003). Philip started his independent career in 2003 at McMaster University, and is currently a Cystic Fibrosis Canada Researcher and Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and an affiliate member of the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine. He is also an affiliate member of the Metabolomics Innovation Centre (TMIC) – Canada’s national laboratory for metabolomics research and innovative analytical services. His work has been funded by NSERC, CIHR, CFI, Genome Canada and Cystic Fibrosis Canada, and involves innovative collaborative research projects that have strong translational potential in clinical medicine and public health.

Cancer is a complex and dynamic disease that poses significant challenges in understanding its progression and treatment. At the Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Institute (GCI) at McGill University, we employ metabolomics including stable isotope tracer analysis to delve into the metabolic intricacies of cancer cells and their microenvironment. Dr. Daina Avizonis, Associate Director of the Metabolomics Innovation Resource (MIR) at GCI, leads a team of experts that work to unravel the metabolic changes occurring in cancer cells and their surroundings. With a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from UC San Diego and postdoctoral fellowships at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley as well as industrial experience, Dr. Avizonis brings a multifaceted scientific background to her role. Her passion for hands-on teaching and the detection of metabolites was ignited while working as an NMR applications chemist at Varian Instruments. This journey led her to GCI, where she and the MIR team provide training and services in metabolic profiling to the research community, contributing to our collective understanding health and disease.

Robert (Bob) K. Ernst, Ph.D., is the Dr. Paul and Mrs. Jean Corcoran Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis in the School of Dentistry. He is also a University of Maryland, Baltimore Distinguished University Professor.

He earned his undergraduate degree in Biology at the State University of New York at Oswego and his PhD in Microbiology at the University of Virginia in the laboratories of Dr. David Rekosh and Dr. Marie Louise Hammarskjold. His post-doctoral research work in Dr. Samuel Miller’s laboratory at the University of Washington focused on understanding the role of bacterial membrane lipids, specifically lipopolysaccharide in altering and defending against host innate immune recognition and killing mechanisms. Prior to joining the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis in 2008, he was a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the University of Washington.

 Dr. Ernst’s laboratory has been at the forefront of innovative research studying the molecular basis and adaptive significance of modifications to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) structure. He specifically focuses on elucidating the molecular basis by which Gram-negative bacteria modify the lipid A component of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and how these alterations affect or circumvent normal host innate immune system responses. He has also developed the bacterial enzymatic combinatorial chemistry (BECC) that can be used to engineer functionally diverse lipid A molecules for use as vaccine adjuvant and for the rapid identification of pathogens directly from complex biological fluids, such as blood and urine, without the need for ex vivo amplification using mass spectrometry.

Prof. Oliver Fiehn has pioneered developments and applications in metabolomics with over 450 publications to date with a current h-index 119, i10 index 401. He started his career as group leader at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, Germany. Since 2004 he is faculty member in the College of Biological Sciences (MCB department) and Professor at the UC Davis Genome Center, overseeing his research laboratory and the satellite core service laboratory in metabolomics research. In 2012 he became the Director of the UC Davis West Coast Metabolomics Center, supervising 35 staff operating 17 mass spectrometers. To focus on large cohort studies and translational metabolomics, he has added the ThermoFisher Center of Excellence in Clinical Metabolomics at the UC Davis clinical campus in Sacramento, CA since 2021. In public outreach, the West Coast Metabolomics Center holds monthly public webinars, has a YouTube channel, a newsletter, invites international scholars to research visits and organizes three metabolomics professional courses per year.

Chris is a Chemistry Professor at Vancouver Island University (Nanaimo, BC) as well as co-director of the Applied Environmental Research Laboratories (AERL). He maintains an active international collaboration network, including the tenure of visiting professorships during sabbaticals in Germany and Italy. He has been awarded the Distinguished Researcher Award at VIU, a Distinguished Chemistry Alumni Award at the University of British Columbia. The AERL conducts pure & applied research, with a central theme the development of direct, online mass spectrometry methods for measurements in complex samples. This has lead to numerous advances for direct environmental, industrial and clinical/bioanalytical measurements. The AERL’s development of mobilized direct mass spectrometry platforms for geospatially resolved, quantitative environmental measurements as well as numerous hyphenated methodologies has transformed capacity for in field chemical determinations. Chris’ current research interests continue to involve the development of direct mass spectrometry instrumentation and their applications for direct, real-time chemical measurements. This includes high precision systems and approaches for improved environmental monitoring, clinical diagnostics, forensic testing, and the development and implementation of rapid, on-site drug testing strategies for use in the opioid overdose crisis.

Dr. Jennifer Geddes-McAlister is a Canada Research Chair in the Proteomics of Fungal Disease in One Health and an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Guelph. Her lab applies mass spectrometry-based proteomics to investigate host-pathogen interactions with a focus on One Health approaches to overcoming fungal disease. She has won numerous awards as an early career researcher in recondition of her scientific contributions since beginning her lab in 2018 and an alumni achievement award from the University of Lethbridge. Dr. Geddes-McAlister is President of the Canadian National Proteomics Network, Director of the Bioinformatics Graduate Program at the University of Guelph, co-founder of the Canadian Proteomics and Artificial Intelligence Consortium, and founder of ‘Moms in Proteomics’ an initiative dedicated to recognizing and supporting mothers in STEM.

Dave is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Microbiology at the University of Victoria where he is also Director of the Genome BC Proteome Centre (https://www.proteincentre.com/). He is also a Mentor for the Chemical Biology group at the University of Gdansk’s International Centre for Cancer Vaccine Science (https://iccvs.ug.edu.pl/). Previously he was a Professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, MD (2013-2020). From 2012-2016 he was a Finland Distinguished Professor (FiDiPro) at the University of Turku in Turku, Finland. From 2013 to 2016 Dave was the Isaac E. Emerson Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and from 2013-2015 he was Director of the UMB School of Pharmacy MS Center. From 2004-2012 he was Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA where he was also Director of the School of Pharmacy mass spectrometry facility.

Lara K. Mahal is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Glycomics and a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Alberta. She is the Founding Director of the Glycomics Institute of Alberta. An expert in glycomics and chemical glycobiology, she developed lectin microarray technology, which provides a high-throughput method for glycomics now widely applied to understand systems from clinical cancer research to host-pathogen interactions. More recently, her work on microRNA regulation of glycosylation is overturning dogma on how these non-coding RNA work. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry at UC Berkeley (2000) with Professor Carolyn Bertozzi and was Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Professor James Rothman at Sloan-Kettering Institute (2000-2003). She started her first independent position as an Assistant Professor in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. Post-tenure in 2009, Professor Mahal moved to New York University, where she was faculty member from 2009-2019.  In September 2019, she joined the faculty of the University of Alberta as the CERC in Glycomics. She has received numerous awards including the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation Fellowship (2004), NSF Career Award (2007), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2008), National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award (2008), the  Horace Isbell Award for Carbohydrate Chemistry from the American Chemical Society (2017).

Susan Murch is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Natural Products Chemistry (2001-2015) at UBC Okanagan. She researches the chemistry of plants and how plant chemistry affects human health. She is the recipient of numerous awards including UBC Researcher of the Year (2009), the G.H. Neil Towers Award (2013), Most Innovative Publication (2012 & 2018)”, Stars of Oceana (2019) and WomiX Mentorship Award (2022). She has published >155 research articles in internationally recognized peer-reviewed journals, >25 book chapters, 6 patents and an edited book. Her metabolomics research began in 2003 with studies of plant diversity. Her current research develops metabolomics and hormonomics tools to understand how plants grow and to investigate the question “how many amino acids do plants actually have?”.

Dr. Harynuk is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Alberta. He received his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Waterloo in 2004, and then moved to Melbourne, Australia to continue the study of multidimensional separations. He joined the University of Alberta in 2007 where he has built a vibrant research group with interests in fundamentals and applications of multidimensional gas chromatography, in a variety of fields, including metabolomics, environmental analysis, and forensics, as well as chemometrics and the development of new tools for data processing. His laboratory is one of the nodes of The Metabolomics Innovation Centre (TMIC), where he has been a node lead and co-PI since 2013.

Dr. Tao Huan received his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Liang Li on developing chemical isotope labelling liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. After graduation, Dr. Huan did postdoctoral work with Dr. Gary Siuzdak at the Scripps Research (La Jolla, CA) to create metabolomics-guided systems biology for an in-depth understanding of disease mechanisms. In July 2018, he came back to Canada with the Assistant Professor position at the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Li is a distinguished figure in the field of analytical chemistry, renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to mass spectrometry and metabolomics. He earned his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Zhejiang University, China, in 1983, followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, in 1989, under the mentorship of Professor David M. Lubman.

Since then, Dr. Li has held various academic positions, including Full Professor at the University of Alberta since July 1999. He has also been an Adjunct Professor of the Biochemistry Department, Faculty of Medicine, since January 2008. Notably, he holds a Visiting Professorship at Zhejiang University, supported by K. P. Chao’s Hi-Tech Foundation for Scholars and Scientists.

Dr. Li's research spans diverse areas of analytical mass spectrometry, with a focus on metabolomics and biomarker discovery. He is a co-PI of The Metabolomics Innovation Centre (TMIC).

Dajana Vuckovic received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Waterloo, and completed postdoctoral training in quantitative proteomics at the University of Toronto. Her group at Concordia University specializes in developing new analytical methods and devices to improve metabolite coverage and data quality in metabolomics, with the overarching goal of discovering and validating personalized biomarkers in cardiovascular health and nutrition. She is a leading researcher in sample preparation for metabolomics, and has introduced in vivo solid-phase microextraction sampling for metabolomics and lipidomics including in vivo sampling of oxylipins in the brain to study neuroinflammation. Her lab has also built highly sensitive assays for mycotoxin biomonitoring, including the largest in-house library of human mycotoxin metabolites that includes 100 metabolites characterized for the first time. Her research has been recognized by the bestowing of the 2019 Young Investigator Award of the Canadian Society for Mass Spectrometry and the 2020 Young Investigator Award of the Eastern Analytical Symposium. Dajana is an active member of the community-driven international consortium mQACC (metabolomics QA & QC Consortium).

Dr. David Wishart (PhD Yale, 1991) is a Distinguished University Professor in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Computing Science at the University of Alberta. He also holds adjunct appointments with the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and with the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. He has been with the University of Alberta since 1995. Dr. Wishart’s research interests are very wide ranging, covering metabolomics, analytical chemistry, drug chemistry, natural product chemistry, molecular biology, protein chemistry and neuroscience. He has developed a number of widely techniques based on NMR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography and gas chromatography to characterize the structures of both small and large molecules. As part of this effort, Dr. Wishart has led the “Human Metabolome Project” (HMP), a multi-university, multi-investigator project that is cataloguing all the known chemicals in human tissues and biofluids. Using a variety of analytical chemistry techniques along with text mining and machine learning, Dr. Wishart and his colleagues have identified or found evidence for more than 250,000 metabolites in the human body. This information has been archived on a freely accessible web-resource called the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB). Dr. Wishart has also been using machine learning and artificial intelligence to help create other useful chemistry databases, such as DrugBank, FooDB and ContaminantDB and software tools (such as MetaboAnalyst, CFM-ID and BioTransformer) to help with the characterization and identification of metabolites, drugs, pesticides and natural products. Over the course of his career Dr. Wishart has published more than 500 research papers in high profile journals on a wide variety of subject areas. These papers have been cited >100,000 times.

Dr. Xia obtained his Medicine degree from Peking University Health Science Center (Beijing, China). His MSc (University of Alberta) thesis was on characterization of immune genes from expressed sequence tags. This project led him to discover his passion and strengths in combining big data, cloud computing, statistics, machine learning and visualization to understand biology and disease. His PhD thesis (University of Alberta) was on bioinformatics and statistics for metabolomics. His postdoctoral research (University of British Columbia) was on integrating next-generation sequencing data and biological networks for systems biology. Dr. Xia joined McGill as an Assistant Professor in 2015. His current research focuses on integrating big data analytics and high-throughput 'omics technologies to understand gene-environment interactions, with applications to metabolomics, microbiomics, and exposomics.