the Committee
President
Farhana Pinu
Affiliation: New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand
Research interests: Microbial and plant metabolomics, fermentation science, flavoromics, multi-omics integration
Instruments of choice: GC-MS, LC-MS, MALDI-TOF-MS
Specialisation in software: R based tools, Chemstation, AMDIS
Keen to collaborate with: Anyone interested in working on projects related to plant, food and impact of biodiversity in horticultural systems
Contact: Farhana.Pinu@plantandfood.co.nz
Vice president
David Beale
Affiliation: Land and Water, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Research interests: All aspects of environmental metabolomics and integrated systems biology.
Instruments of choice: Anything with a Mass Spec attached.
Professional webpage: https://people-my.csiro.au/B/D/david-beale
Treasurer
Konstantinos Kouremenos
Affiliation: Trajan Scientific and Medical
Research interests: Metabolomics, Lipidomics, Microsampling, Quality assurance/control
Instruments of choice: GC/LC – QQQ, QToF, Orbitrap
Specialisation in software: Agilent Masshunter, Shimadzu LabSolutions, ThermoFisher Chromeleon/Xcalibur, MS-DIAL, XCMS, Metaboanalyst.
Keen to collaborate with: Anyone interested in microsampling for metabolomics/lipidomics
Contact: kkouremenos@trajanscimed.com
Secretary
Luke Whiley
Affiliation: Centre for Computational and Systems Medicine, Health Futures Institute, Murdoch University, Perth, WA
Research interests: Metabolic phenotyping, lipidomics, mass spectrometry, healthy ageing, dementia
Instruments of choice: triple quadrupole mass spectrometer
Specialization in software: R, SkylineMS, MassLynx
Keen to collaborate with: Anyone! I have an especial interest in the application of metabolic phenotyping to neurological conditions across a lifespan. Examples include dementias such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease and events including traumatic brain injury and concussion.
Contact: luke.whiley@murdoch.edu.au
ECR Leader
Torben Kimhofer
Affiliation: Centre for Computational and Systems Medicine, Health Futures Institute, Murdoch University, Perth, WA
Research interests: Systems medicine, methods for omics - fusion, biomolecular databases & ontologies
Data of choice: High-throughput NMR spectroscopy, untargeted MS (incl pre-separation, FIA methods), NGS
Specialization in software: Python, R , C++, SQL, gcloud, docker, web-applications
Keen to collaborate with: Researchers incl other bioinformaticians working with biolfuid and tissue samples.
Contact: torben.kimhofer@murdoch.edu.au
Early Career Researcher
Nathan Lawler
Affiliation: Australian National Phenome Centre, Health Futures Institute, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia
Research interests: Human Performance, Metabolic Phenotyping, Data Science
Development and application of mass spectrometry methods to measure metabolites in clinical and human performance studies to discover novel markers linked to exercise performance and health.
Instruments of choice: LC-MS instruments (QToF and timsTOF)
Specialisation in software: R based tools, Matlab
Keen to collaborate with: Anyone interested in similar research fields.
Contact: Nathan.Lawler@murdoch.edu.au
Sarah Hancock
Affiliation: School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Sydney
Research interests: metabolomics and lipidomics: cancer metabolism, obesity and energy metabolism, ageing, single-cell metabolomics
Instruments of choice: LCMS (HRAM), shotgun lipidomics.
Specialisation in software: MS-DIAL, Compound Discoverer, R.
Keen to collaborate with: Anyone interested in cancer and cell metabolism
Contact: sarah.hancock@unsw.edu.au
Monique Ryan
Affiliation: Australian National Phenome Centre / Murdoch University
Research interests: Clinical metabolomics and lipidomics, LC-MS method development
Instruments of choice: LC-TQ-MS, LC-QToF-MS
Specialisation in software: RStudio, SIMCA, Excel
Keen to collaborate with: Anyone interested in translational research, particularly mass spectrometry to clinical settings
Contact: monique.ryan96@gmail.com
Katie Hillyer
Affiliation: CSIRO Land and Water
Research interests: Environmental metabolomics (aquatic)
Instruments of choice: LC-MS QQQ and LC-MS QTOF
Specialisation in software: PRIMER and PERMANOVA, SIMCA, ChemRICH
Keen to collaborate with: Any with an environmental focus, in particular in relation to the study of applied ecological and functional effects
Contact: katie.hillyer@csiro.au
Local Representatives
Nicola Gray
Affiliation: Australian National Phenome Centre, Murdoch University, Perth WA
Research interests: LC-MS, method development, type 2 diabetes, obesity
Instruments of choice: Waters TQ-XS, Sciex QTRAP 6500+, Bruker Impact II QToF
Specialisation in software: SIMCA-P
Keen to collaborate with: Everyone!
Contact: Nicola.Gray@murdoch.edu.au
David De Souza
Affiliation: Metabolomics Australia, The University of Melbourne
Research interests: Polar metabolite profiling, Metabolic flux, Stable Isotope Labelling
Instruments of choice: GC-MS (Q, QqQ)
Specialisation in software: Shimadzu Labsolutions Insight, DExSI (open source GC-MS stable isotope labelling analysis)
Keen to collaborate with: Openly accessible platform facility
Contact: desouzad@unimelb.edu.au
Marten Snel
Affiliation: South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), Adelaide, SA, Australia
Research interests: MS-imaging of lipids and metabolites, lipidomics and proteomics of patient derived samples.
Instruments of choice: LC-Q-TOF-MS, MALDI-Q-TOF-MS
Keen to collaborate with: Anyone, especially in translational biomedical research.
Contact: Marten.Snel@sahmri.com
Horst Joachim Schirra
Affiliation: School of Environment & Science / Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery, Griffith University, Nathan, Qld, Australia.
Research interests: Metabolic regulation, C. elegans, insect metabolomics, livestock and agriculture, food, environment, genome-scale metabolic modelling, multi-omics integration
Instruments of choice: high-field NMR
Specialisation in software: Simca, Chenomx, Matlab
Keen to collaborate with: Anyone interested in the above mentioned research areas
Contact: h.schirra@griffith.edu.au
Anthony Don
Affiliation: The University of Sydney
Research interests: How altered lipid metabolism drives neurodegenerative diseases.
Instruments of choice: ThermoFisher Q-Exactive HF-X and TSQ-Altis triple quadrupole LC-MS/MS for untargeted and targeted lipidomics, respectively.
Specialisation in software: We use LipidSearch for untargeted lipidomics and TraceFinder for targeted lipidomics.
Keen to collaborate with: We collaborate with many other research groups investigating lipids in cell biology and as disease biomarkers.
Contact: anthony.don@sydney.edu.au
Heike Schwendel
Affiliation: New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Ltd, Palmerston North, NZ
Research interests: applying analytical chemistry including metabolomics to Horticulture, Agriculture, Food and Human Nutrition research
Instruments of choice: GC-MS QQQ, LC-MS QTOF
Keen to collaborate with: Anyone interested in working on projects related Food Provenance, Horticulture and Agriculture system
Contact: Heike.Schwendel@plantandfood.co.nz
Erica Zarate
Affiliation: University of Auckland, NZ
Research interests: Metabolomics, GC-MS, Mass Spec, marine science, data processing
Instruments of choice: Agilent GC-MSs (Agilent 7890 GC + 5975C inert MSD + Pal autosampler and Agilent 7890B GC + 5977A inert MSD + Agilent autosampler)
Specialisation in software: Chemstation, AMDIS, MassOmics package in R
Keen to collaborate with: researchers interested in metabolomics analysis using GC-MS, using different derivatisation protocols for different metabolites.
Contact: e.zarate@auckland.ac.nz