Plenary Speakers

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    Timothy J. Garrett, PhD

    Associate Professor, University of Florida

    Plenary: Changing the Landscape for Microsampling in Metabolomics and Lipidomics

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    Livia Schiavinato Eberlin, PhD

    Professor and Vice-Chair Research, Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine

    Plenary: Leveraging Direct Mass Spectrometry Analysis of Metabolites in Tissues to Guide and Expedite Clinical Decision Making

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    Dr. Kathy McCoy

    Professor, Physiology and Pharmacology, Cumming School of Medicine

    Plenary: Microbiome, Metabolites and Modulation of Immunity

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    Roger Linington

    Professor of Chemistry, Simon Fraser University

    Plenary: The Power of Integrated Omics for Large-Scale Bioactive Molecule Discovery

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    José Juan Ordaz-Ortiz

    Professor and Director, Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry Group, National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute

    Plenary: Revolutionizing Phytochemical Analysis via Ultra-High Resolution Isotopic Analysis with FT-ICR MS

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Timothy J. Garrett, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Florida

Changing the Landscape for Microsampling in Metabolomics and Lipidomics

Dr. Garrett is an Associate Professor and Chief of Experimental Pathology in the Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine at the College of Medicine at The University of Florida.

In addition to his role as chief, Dr. Garrett has served as PI or Co-PI on grants and contracts totaling over $39M of funding from institutions such as the NIH, JDRF and the ADA. As an associate professor, Dr. Garrett has supervised the research of 18 graduate students and 3 post-doctoral students during the past 15 years, and received the term professorship in 2018, an exemplary teacher award in 2019 and 2024, and the IFAS high impact publication in 2016. Research in the group has led to over 120 peer-reviewed publications with an h-index of 46 and an i10-index of 138.

His publications have resulted in over 7000 citations and he has given over 100 lectures in 6 different countries related to his research.

Dr. Garrett received his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia in Chemistry and his PHD in Chemistry from the University of Florida. As a graduate student, he worked on the development and design the first imaging mass spectrometry ion trap instrument through a partnership with ThermoFisher Scientific and studied the disposition and characterization of phospholipids in brain tissue. He joined the faculty at the University of Florida in 2006, where he has developed a research program in metabolomics, lipidomics, and small molecule quantitation for clinical and biological research using mass spectrometry approaches. He is also currently Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Mass Spectrometry and Advances in the Clinical lab.

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Livia Schiavinato Eberlin, PhD, Professor and Vice-Chair Research, Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine

Leveraging Direct Mass Spectrometry Analysis of Metabolites in Tissues to Guide and Expedite Clinical Decision Making

Livia Schiavinato Eberlin, PhD received her BS in Chemistry from the State University of Campinas (Sao Paulo, Brazil) and her PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Purdue University.

She pursued her postdoctoral research in Chemistry at Stanford University. Eberlin started her independent career in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin and then moved to Baylor College of Medicine where she is currently a Professor and Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Surgery.

Dr. Eberlin and her team are recognized for their innovative research in analytical chemistry, medical mass spectrometry, and cancer research. Eberlin is the recipient of many honors for their research, including a NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, Forbes 30 under 30 listing in the Healthcare category, a Sloan Fellowship, a Moore Inventor Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Dr. Eberlin’s research program centers around the development and application of novel mass spectrometry technologies in health-related research, with a particular focus on disease detection and diagnosis.

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Dr. Kathy McCoy, Professor, Physiology and Pharmacology, Cumming School of Medicine

Microbiome, Metabolites and Modulation of Immunity

Dr. Kathy McCoy is a Professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Cumming School of Medicine, member of the Snyder Institute, Director of the International Microbiome Center, and holds the Killam Memorial Chair at the University of Calgary. Her research group uses germ-free and gnotobiotic models to investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which the microbiome regulates host immunity and physiology. She is particularly interested in the dynamic interplay between the gut microbiota and the innate and adaptive immune systems. Her research aims to understand how exposure to intestinal microbes, particularly during early life, educates and regulates the mucosal, systemic and neuronal immune systems and how this can affect susceptibility to diseases, such as allergy, autoimmunity, and neurodevelopmental disorders. Her lab also investigates how the microbiome regulates the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy with the aim to identify microbial therapies that can be employed to enhance current therapeutic approaches.

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Roger Linington, Professor of Chemistry, Simon Fraser University

The Power of Integrated Omics for Large-Scale Bioactive Molecule Discovery

Professor Linington received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Leeds and his Ph.D. in natural products chemistry from the University of British Columbia in Canada. He started his independent academic career at the University of California Santa Cruz before moving back to Canada in 2015. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University where he holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Natural Products and High-Throughput Screening. 

His research program focuses developing new tools in 1) chemical characterization of complex mixtures, 2) phenotypic fingerprinting of bioactive metabolites and 3) creation of informatics platforms to integrate chemical and biological datasets. Professor Linington’s research program integrates wet lab science in small molecule characterization with informatics tool development through the creation of open-source databases, webservers and informatics pipelines for small molecule discovery and characterization. Professor Linington has interests in both the practical aspects of small molecule identification and the technical aspects of developing new computational methods in this area. This includes separation science, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, database design, and algorithm development. His team maintains the Natural Products Atlas (www.npatlas.org), a database of all known microbial metabolites.

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José Juan Ordaz-Ortiz, Professor and Director, Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry Group, National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute

Revolutionizing Vanillin Authentication: Ultra-High Resolution Isotopic Analysis with FT-ICR MS

Dr. José Juan Ordaz Ortiz graduated as an Agri-Food Engineer from Universidad Autónoma Chapingo in 1994 and later earned his Master's and PhD (2000-2005) at the University of Nantes and the French Institute of Agricultural Research in France. He has held key research positions, including leading the plant metabolomics laboratory at Cranfield University (UK) and currently heading the Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry group at the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity (CINVESTAV). His research focuses on the phytochemical potential of endemic Mexican species and crops like vanilla, agave, tomato, and chili, with over 52 published articles cited more than 2,000 times. He is an editor for multiple scientific journals and has supervised numerous theses at different academic levels. Dr. Ordaz is an active member of international scientific societies, including the Royal Society of Chemistry, and has served as Vice-President of the Mexican Society of Proteomics. Since 2023, he has been a Level III researcher in Mexico’s National System of Researchers.