We are excited to share that our recent work, led by current student Joe Corstvet, titled “Senescence-Induced Lipidome Alterations in Mesenchymal Stromal Cells”, has been published in the Journal of Proteome Research.

This publication explores the modifications in lipid profiles, detected via ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry within mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) as their senescence-associated ß-galactosidase increases over time in culture. As MSC have previously showed great promise as a treatment for a variety of diseases, these lipid alterations could inform future senescence-monitoring strategies while culturing these potentially therapeutic cells.

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jproteome.5c00355

We are excited to share that our recent work, led by current student Eric Gier and recent graduate Dr. Dmitry Leontyev, entitled “Multipass CCS Refiner: A Web Application for Accurate Collision Cross Section Calibration in Cyclic Ion Mobility-Mass Spectrometry”, has been published in the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry.

The Multipass CCS Refiner is an open-source, Shiny-based application that automates CCS refinement in cyclic ion mobility instruments using the Lin & Costello perturbation-correction approach. By making this resource freely available, we aim to support the mass spectrometry community in adopting multipass CCS calibration and to accelerate research relying on high-confidence CCS measurements.

https://doi.org/10.1021/jasms.5c00199

It’s with heavy hearts but also much excitement that we say goodbye to Dr. Olatomiwa Bifarin as he moves on to continue working on several self-directed projects in the artificial intelligence and machine learning space. As he continues to mentor and work with current master’s student, Rithika, we are excited to continue following this next adventure of his that will undoubtedly hold both great accomplishments and challenges.

We’re so happy for you, Bif, and wish you all the best!

This work lead by recent graduate, Dr. Dmitry Leontyev, and current student, Eric Gier, examines the combined calculation of CCS values, derived both from a cyclic ion mobility mass spectrometry and machine learning algorithms, to improve metabolite annotation. The collection of high accuracy multi-pass CCS values allowed for metabolite annotation via database matches when tandem mass spectrometry data was not collected and for filtering out incorrect annotations when using the SIRIUS software platform.

https://doi.org/10.1021/jasms.5c00090J.Am.S

Alex Van Grouw is the newest Ph.D. graduate of the Fernández Lab! She recently defended her thesis, titled “Machine Learning Enabled Stem Cell Lipidomics” and we could not be prouder! Her next steps include working as a lead, senior scientist at K Prime Inc. in Santa Rosa, California, and we are so excited for her.

Congratulations again, Alex, and we can’t wait to see all that you accomplish in the future!

Congratulations, Grace! She was recently named the winner of the Research Administration & Support (RA&S) Spotlight Award for her recent research and teaching contributions between both her work in the Fernández Lab in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Carr Lab in Aerospace Engineering.

This award serves to recognize her efforts to develop new instruments and methods to detect complex molecules of life on other planets. Her work has led to techniques with extremely low detection limits and incredibly high sensitivity to detect trace molecules. In addition to her research, Grace has restructured the space instrumentation for life detection course with elevated experiments and student engagement.

Every year, the American Chemical Society honors the contributions of an individual researcher from each of three major geographic regions who has recently made a major impact in the field of measurement science. Prof. Facundo Fernández was recently named the 2025 award winner for the region of North and South America, and we could not be more proud! Congratulations, Facundo!

https://axial.acs.org/analytical-chemistry/meet-the-2025-advances-in-measurement-science-lectureship-award-winners

Dmitry Leontyev is the newest Ph.D. graduate of the Fernández Lab! He recently defended his thesis, titled “Tissue Metabolomics by Advanced Mass Spectrometry and Separation Techniques” and we could not be more proud! His next career move includes joining Genentech out in San Francisco, California.

Congratulations again, Dmitry, and we can’t wait to see all that you accomplish in the future!

Earlier this week, senior graduate student, Dmitry Leontyev, had the opportunity to present at the Waters Imaging Innovation Summit where he presented his work on ‘Leveraging Collision Cross Sections and Machine Learning Predictions for Metabolite Identification’.

Good job, Dmitry! Keep making the lab proud!

This work lead by recent graduate of the Fernández Lab, Dr. Carter Asef, entitled “Beyond Targeted Newborn Screening: A Nontargeted Workflow to Investigate Birthweight-Metabolome Correlations”, was published in ACS affiliated journal, Analytical Chemistry. This work expands upon the traditional scope of the Recommended Uniform Screening newborn panel by leveraging the robust, non-targeted capabilities of HILIC LC-MS on dried bloodspot samples of a large patient cohort of 810 newborns. In addition to identifying correlations between newborn birth weight and metabolites typically included in the current newborn screening panel, new biomarkers and metabolic phenotypes were identified that were closely associated with parenteral nutrition administration and maternal nicotine exposure.

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.4c06061