2019 Ohio Mass Spectrometry and Metabolomics Symposium

The 3^rd annual Ohio Mass Spectrometry and Metabolomics Symposium (OMSMS) was held at the Blackwell Inn on October 1-2, 2019. The conference drew over 200 registrants from 21 government, industry and non-profit organizations and 13 academic institutions. This group of 200 included 85 students and 14 post-docs, 40 industry professionals and 70 faculty and staff members.

During the two-day event, participants attended plenary sessions with four keynote and invited speakers. Peter Dorrestein (University of California- San Diego) spoke on connecting the world's mass spectrometry data to understand the chemistry of life. Natalie Agar (Harvard Medical School) spoke on mass spectrometry imaging applications in clinical decision making. Ian Lewis (University of Calgary) presented on harnessing metabolomics to combat infectious diseases, and Susan Sumner (University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill) presented on how the exposome meets precision nutrition. The symposium agenda also included flash talk, oral and poster presentations from established researchers, students and postdoctoral researchers; Lunch and Learn sessions sponsored by external speakers; Native MS and Metabolomics workshop sessions; a student-industry networking session; and a final evening reception.

One of the main highlights of the event was the first-ever OMSMS poster competition. Over 50 students, postdocs, faculty, research staff members and industry professionals presented posters that were later analyzed by a group of 28 judges. In the end, four individuals came away with monetary awards for their impressive work. Juliana Laszakovits came in fourth place with her project titled “Using Multiple Ionization Techniques to Understand Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM) Oxidation by Permanganate”; Preston Manwill, with his project “Metabolomic analysis of an endophytic Streptomyces sp. from the liverwort Bazzania trilobata”, and Maryam Baniasad, with her project “Optimization of Sample Preparation Method for Proteomics Analysis of Gut Microbiota”, tied for second place. The overall winner of the poster competition was Haley Chatelaine with her project titled “Untargeted Metabolomic Profiling of Early Diet Energy Intake in C57BL/6N Mice Indicates Tentative Differences Correlated with Diet and Colon Region”.

The 2019 OMSMS proved to be a successful breeding ground for the development of new knowledge, new connections and new opportunities in the fields of mass spectrometry and metabolomics. Its generous sponsors, which included the OSU Center for Applied Plant Sciences, Metabolon, Abbott, Agilent, Bruker, SCIEX, Waters Corporation, Thermo Fisher Scientific, 908 devices, Advion, Biocrates and Peak Scientific, made the entire event possible.

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