News

Mathieu Lavallée-Adam, ECR Co-Chair, University of Ottawa, Canada

The HUPO Early Career Researcher (ECR) Initiative is proud to announce that Dr. Ruth Huttenhain and Dr. Mathieu Lavallée-Adam have been newly elected as its Co-Chairs. The ECR initiative also thanks Dr. Justyna Fert-Bober, founding member of the HUPO ECR Initiative and exiting Chair, for spearheading the activities that the ECR Initiative is now known for, such as the HUPO Mentoring Day, Manuscript Competition and Ph.D. Poster Competition. “I am happy to leave the leadership of the HUPO ECR Initiative in such good hands. I am convinced that Dr. Huttenhain and Dr. Lavallée-Adam will grow the initiative and build an environment that will foster new collaborations and bring new ideas to life,” declares Dr. Fert-Bober. Dr. Huttenhain, who has, among other things, organized the HUPO ECR manuscript competition in the past, says: “In my role as a Co-Chair of the HUPO ECR Initiative, I am particularly excited about growing a larger community of early career scientists in proteomics with the ultimate goal to provide guidance for taking the next steps in their careers. I will also be honored to represent the ECR Initiative in the Organizing Committee of the HUPO World Congress and to advocate for a program that provides visibility for early career scientists and highlights their scientific contributions.” Finally, Dr. Lavallée-Adam, who has been organizing last year’s mentoring sessions at HUPO CONNECT and coordinating ECR’s HUPOST publications adds: “Early career scientists are more diverse than ever and the HUPO ECR Initiative must help them exploit their full potential. I look forward to building upon our current portfolio of activities and constructing new initiatives to showcase proteomics rising stars and provide them the tools to be more competitive on the job market.”

You will find below short bios of Dr. Huttenhain and Dr. Lavallée-Adam, who are both recipients of the Proteomics Highlight of the Year by an Early Career Researcher Award given at the 2018 Human Proteome Organization World Congress.

Ruth Huttenhain
Ruth Huttenhain is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology. She obtained a Pharmacy degree from the University of Bonn and a PhD from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where she developed high-throughput, large-scale targeted mass spectrometric approaches. During her postdoc at UCSF, Ruth extended her expertise in quantitative mass spectrometry to study dynamics of protein interaction networks. She pioneered a proximity labeling-mass spectrometry approach that simultaneously captures the precise temporal remodeling and spatial organization of proximal protein networks. The research of Ruth’s research group at UCSF focuses on characterizing protein interaction and signaling networks to understand the biology underlying the development of psychiatric disorders and the sensing and transmission of pain.

Mathieu Lavallée-Adam
Mathieu Lavallée-Adam is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology and is affiliated to the Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology. He obtained a B.Sc. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Computer Science, Bioinformatics option, from McGill University. He then performed his postdoctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute. His research focuses on the development of novel statistical and machine learning algorithms for the analysis of mass spectrometry-based proteomics data and protein-protein interaction networks. He also designs computational methods mining proteomics datasets for biological information through their integration with genomics data. Dr. Lavallée-Adam is a recipient of the John Charles Polanyi Prize in Chemistry, recognizing the impact of his bioinformatics algorithms on the mass spectrometry community. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian National Proteomics Network (CNPN), in which he mentors a group of early career researchers in the establishment of activities for the Canadian Proteomics community.