International Mass Spectrometry Imaging Society Conference III

Jennifer is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff and lead of the 'Carbon Initiative' at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, an adjunct professor at UC Merced, and an investigator at the University of California-Berkeley Innovative Genomics Institute. Trained in soil ecology and bio-geo-chemistry, she studies how plants and soil microorganisms interact, using stable isotopes as tracers, DNA and RNA analyses, and mathematical modeling.  Her current research is largely focused on how to make soil carbon persist through sustainable agricultural innovation. Recently, she led a large team project for the US Department of Energy--called “Roads to Removal”, it is a national analysis of the capacity and costs for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, with data for every county in the USA. She is currently the lead of a new DOE Energy Earthshot Research Center called Terraforming Soil—her team is designing novel bio- and geo-engineering approaches to get carbon ‘out of the air and back into the ground’. She has been recognized with the US Department of Energy Early Career award and Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, and is a fellow of the Ecological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Alison Scott is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis. Alison is the co-director of the Spatial Systems Biology Laboratory (SSBL). Her laboratory uses MSI to identify new host-directed therapy targets in pulmonary infections including bacterial, viral, and fungal models. Using this approach, she has defined new mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis through host lipid and metabolite regulation using image-driven methods. These investigations now extend into models of neuroinflammation, sterile inflammation, and chronic pain.

Dr. Alison Scott is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, in the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis. Alison is the co-director of the Spatial Systems Biology Laboratory (SSBL). Her laboratory uses MSI to identify new host-directed therapy targets in pulmonary infections including bacterial, viral, and fungal models. Using this approach, she has defined new mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis through host lipid and metabolite regulation using image-driven methods. These investigations now extend into models of neuroinflammation, sterile inflammation, and chronic pain.

Dr. Ramon Sun is the Anne and Oscar Lackner Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Florida. He serves as Director of the Center for Advanced Spatial Biomolecule Research. His laboratory develops next-generation spatial metabolomics technologies to investigate how metabolic pathways are organized in space and time. Dr. Sun’s research focuses on the role of metabolism in aging, neurodegeneration, fibrosis, and cancer, including pediatric sarcoma and neurological glycogen storage diseases. His work integrates biochemistry, mass spectrometry imaging, and systems biology to uncover fundamental metabolic principles and drive therapeutic discovery.

Prof. Dr. Hab. Eng. Tomasz Ruman (born 1980) is a full professor and a research and teaching employee at the Department of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Rzeszów University of Technology. He specializes, among others, in matrix-free methods for laser mass spectrometry, synthesis and characterization of nanostructures, and mass spectrometry imaging methods. He applies and optimizes new methods for the study of biological material - microbiological systems, physiological fluids, human, animal and plant tissues. This research has been expanded to include the application of new methods for new, small-molecule cancer biomarkers of kidney, prostate and bladder cancer. He has promoted six PhDs, five of whom worked in the area of new methods for laser mass spectrometry and mass spectrometry imaging. He is the designer and creator of the first experimental setup for direct 3D MSI. He published his research results in prestigious journals, for example Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis, Analytical Chemistry, Scientific Reports, Analytica Chimica Acta, the Analyst, Metabolomics, Journal of Cultural Heritage, International Biodeterioration and Biodegradation. He is also the editor-in-chief of the local scientific journal Chemical Technology & Biotechnology. He is the author or co-author of 110 scientific publications (98 in the SCOPUS database) and his H-index is 22. 

Prof. Dr. Hab. Eng. Tomasz Ruman (born 1980) is a full professor and a research and teaching employee at the Department of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Rzeszów University of Technology. He specializes, among others, in matrix-free methods for laser mass spectrometry, synthesis and characterization of nanostructures, and mass spectrometry imaging methods. He applies and optimizes new methods for the study of biological material - microbiological systems, physiological fluids, human, animal and plant tissues. This research has been expanded to include the application of new methods for new, small-molecule cancer biomarkers of kidney, prostate and bladder cancer. He has promoted six PhDs, five of whom worked in the area of new methods for laser mass spectrometry and mass spectrometry imaging. He is the designer and creator of the first experimental setup for direct 3D MSI. He published his research results in prestigious journals, for example Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis, Analytical Chemistry, Scientific Reports, Analytica Chimica Acta, the Analyst, Metabolomics, Journal of Cultural Heritage, International Biodeterioration and Biodegradation. He is also the editor-in-chief of the local scientific journal Chemical Technology & Biotechnology. He is the author or co-author of 110 scientific publications (98 in the SCOPUS database) and his H-index is 22. 

Julia Laskin is the William F. and Patty J. Miller Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Purdue University. Her research is focused on the development of mass spectrometry-based instrumentation and experimental approaches for selective modification of substrates using beams of mass-selected ions and for quantitative molecular imaging of biological samples.

Dr. Laskin obtained her M.Sc. in Physics from the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute (1990) and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1998) with Prof. Chava Lifshitz. She did her postdoctoral research with Dr. Jean Futrell at the University of Delaware and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Prior to joining Purdue in 2017, she was a scientist at PNNL (2002-2017) and was promoted to the highest scientific rank in 2011.

Dr. Laskin’s research has resulted in over 320 peer-reviewed publications including invited reviews and book chapters and 11 patents. She is Past President of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) and an editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Mass Spectrometry. She was Vice President for Programs and President of the ASMS, a co-organizer of the 2019 ASMS Asilomar Conference on Imaging Mass Spectrometry, and a chair of the 2017 Gordon Research Conference on Gaseous Ions.Her research has been honored with several prestigious awards including Presidential Early Career Award (2007), ASMS Biemann Medal (2008), Inaugural Rising Star Award of the ACS Women Chemists Committee (2011), PNNL Director's Science and Engineering Achievement Award (2014), Medal of the Russian Society for Mass Spectrometry (2017), the Ron Hites Award (2019), The Riveros Medal of the Brazilian Mass Spectrometry Society (2022), Advances in Measurement Science Lectureship Award (2023), ACS Chemical Instrumentation Award (2025), and other.