Switzerland

Bernd Bodenmiller

Highly multiplexed imaging of tissues with subcellular resolution by imaging mass cytometry.
Bernd Bodenmiller is a quantitative biologist who develops novel experimental and computational approaches for the quantitative analysis of tumor ecosystems to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of tumor growth for the benefit of patients. He is the founding director of the Department of Quantitative Biomedicine (DQBM) at the University of Zurich, which fosters research and education at the interface of biomedical research, biotechnology, and computational biology to guide development of next-generation precision medicine. Professor Bodenmiller obtained his PhD in the group of Ruedi Aebersold at ETH Zürich. For his postdoctoral training, he joined the laboratory of Garry P. Nolan at Stanford University. In 2012, he became a group leader and in 2013 an SNF/ERC assistant professor at the University of Zürich. In 2019, he was tenured and became the founding director of the DQBM. His group pioneered the development of imaging mass cytometry, an approach that enables simultaneously imaging of over 50 proteins and transcripts in tissues (Nat. Methods, 2014; Cell Systems, 2017) and the histoCAT software toolbox (Nat. Methods, 2017). His groups applies these methods to unravel how cells in the tumor ecosystem drive cancer development to identify mechanisms that might be exploited for therapeutic targeting (Nat. Biotechnology, 2017, Cell, 2017; Cell, 2019).

Singapore

Anne Bendt

Anne K Bendt is Principal Investigator and Associate Director at SLING, the Singapore Lipidomics Incubator, an internationally renowned R&D program in lipid research and technology development, anchored at the National University of Singapore. She focusses on the translation of mass spectrometry based technologies into clinical applications, primarily for lipids and small molecules. Anne is further passionate about training and education and has made substantial contributions to SLING’s various workshops and the highly successful ‘ic lipid’ training course. She serves on the ‘Clinical Lipidomics’ steering committee within the International Lipidomics Society, as Editor for the ‘Clinical Mass Spectrometry’ Elsevier journal, and is Lead of the Lipidomics track for the Mass Spectrometry: Application to the Clinical Lab (MSACL) EU conference, where she is also co-instructor of ‘Lipidomics 101’, the very first short course for clinical lipidomics. Early 2019 Anne co-founded the global initiative ‘Females in Mass Spectrometry’ (FeMS), serving as co-chair.

Netherlands

Albert Heck

The research of Albert Heck (Utrecht University) focuses on the development and applications of advanced mass spectrometry-based proteomics technologies. Heck introduced TiO2 and Ti4+-IMAC based technologies for phospho-enrichment. Heck also pioneered the use of alternative proteases and hybrid peptide fragmentation techniques. Heck is additionally known for his expertise in mass spectrometry based structural biology, using native mass spectrometry, top-down proteomics, cross-linking and/or HD exchange mass spectrometry. The Heck-lab develops dedicated instruments for the analysis of intact proteins and protein complexes. Through the development of the XlinkX and PhoX his group also facilitated proteome wide cross-linking studies. Heck is recipient of the HUPO Discovery Award (2013), and the Proteomics Pioneer Award from the European Proteomics Association (EuPA, 2014). He is elected member of EMBO and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Arts (KNAW), and recipient of the Spinoza Prize, the most distinguished scientific award in the Netherlands. In 2018 Heck received the Thomson medal (IMSF) and the Krebs medal (FEBS).