Metabolomics 2023 Niagara Falls

The 19th Annual International Conference of the Metabolomics Society was held on June 18-22 in downtown Niagara Falls, Canada. This conference was attended by ~725 attendees from about 40 different countries. The science display was fantastic with 5 plenary speakers, 10 keynote speakers, 4 session keynote speakers, nearly 130 oral presentations in 3 parallel sessions, 12 workshops, 13 lunch presentations by sponsors, and also displaying 376 posters. There were four Metabolomics Society awards and series of travel awards from different international affiliates.

Congratulations to the award winners

Professor Jules Griffin was made a Lifetime Honorary Fellow for his impact in metabolomics for understanding the metabolic syndrome and how nutrition plays a major role in human health, as well as for his leadership of the society.
Professor Pieter Dorrestein was also made a Lifetime Honorary Fellow for his development and foundation of new mass spec techniques and informatics which he and his team have made available to the scientific community.
Professor Caroline Johnson received the 2023 Metabolomics Society Medal for her contributions to the field of metabolomics.
Dr Mónica Cala was recognized for her outstanding achievements in metabolomics by a Society member and presented the 2023 The President’s Award.

Two of TMIC members were among the travel award recipients. Dr. Shuang Zhao received EMN Travel Award for Postdoctoral Researchers and Kieran Tarazona Carrillo was among the three MANA Travel Awards recipients. A big congratulation to Shuang and Kieran.

Shuang joined TMIC Li’s node after his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of Alberta in 2018, as a research scientist and Nova Medical Testing Inc. as the Vice President. His research focuses on developing innovative LC-MS-based metabolomics and lipidomics solutions. Specifically, he developed 4-channel chemical isotope labeling LC-MS methods, which feature high coverage analysis with outstanding quantification ability for metabolomics analysis. By applying these cutting-edge analytical techniques, he is working on developing novel solutions for clinical metabolomics/lipidomics analysis, and global biomarker discovery for medical and health diagnostic applications. His poster was about “Recent Progress in Developing Novel Metabolite Identification Approaches for Chemical Isotope Labeling LC-MS Based Metabolomics”

EMN Travel Award for Postdoctoral Researchers

Kieran is a PhD candidate in the TMIC Harynuk’s node at the University of Alberta. Their current research focuses on the development of fecal collection and metabolite stabilization technologies in collaboration with DNA Genotek. Additionally, they are studying symbiotic relationships of crabs and environmental exposures with algae from the French Caribbean environments in collaboration with researchers from the University of the Antilles. Their award poster entitled “Evaluation of fecal metabolite stabilization chemistries using GC×GC-TOFMS”

TMIC also actively participated throughout Metabolomics 2023. Two TMIC node leaders, Dr. Philip Britz-McKibbin and Dr. Dajana Vuckovic deserve congratulations for co-chairing this excellent conference. Thank you to their students and the Snap Conference Solutions team for all their efforts in ensuring the success of the conference and showcasing Canada to the world.

TMIC node leaders and team engaged in the workshop, session chair, oral, and poster presentations. Thanks to Dr. David Wishart, Dr. Jeff Xia, and Dr. Dajana Vuckovic for providing engaging workshops and also vendor presentation:

Emergent Technologies in NMR Metabolomics
Using MetaboAnalyst 5.0 for high-throughput LC-MS and tandem MS spectral processing, annotation, and multi-omics integration
Moving Toward Consensus: mQACC Community Engagement on Best QA/QC Practices in LC-MS-Based Untargeted Metabolomics
MythBusters: Busting Some Myths about Quantitative Metabolomics