ABOUT US

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  Dmitry Eremin is a freshly minted Chair of LAMMS. He first used mass spectrometry as a freshman at Moscow State University and realized that he had found his passion. After obtaining his PhD in Organic Chemistry and Catalysis focusing on mass spectrometry insights into the mechanisms of chemical transformations from Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry of Russian Academy of Sciences, he became an Agilent Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Southern California. He now investigates phenomena occurring on the surface of microdroplets. With the aspiration of pursuing an academic path, Dmitry deems to establish mass spectrometry in areas where it is currently underrepresented and advancing education in this discipline. 

Ashli Simone is an inspired member of LAMMS who is motivated to bring back in person meetings and expand LAMMS activities. She has been running mass spectrometers since her graduate school days at Colorado State University in 2012 and has a love for all things mass spec. She worked as a field service engineer specializing in QQQ and TOF for Agilent Technologies. She is currently a Technical Product Specialist for MOBILion Systems, responsible for customer education and liaising between multiple departments to produce content and understand the role of ion mobility in multiple markets. Her drive for education, organization, structure, and collaboration are skills that will serve her well in her new position as Vice-Chair of LAMMS. 

Mario Alba’s journey in mass spectrometry began in industry, where he built and managed lab operations while refining quality control processes and analytical workflows. During this time, he leveraged advanced instrumentation across diverse platforms, setting the stage for his transition to the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute. At Ellison, he developed proteomic and metabolomic workflows and led collaborations in translational cancer research, igniting his passion for applying advanced analytical techniques to biomedical challenges. This experience inspired him to pursue a PhD in Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Southern California, where his research focused on lipid-mediated inflammation in liver disease progression, utilizing proteomics, lipidomics, and metabolomics. Now a Postdoctoral Scientist at Cedars-Sinai under Dr. Jenny Van Eyk and Dr. Shelly Lu, Mario applies cutting-edge mass spectrometry techniques to study the diverse etiologies driving liver disease progression. As Secretary of LAMMS, his dedication to collaboration, education, and innovation will continue to help drive growth within the Los Angeles mass spectrometry community. 

 Paolo Benigni is the Director of R&D at Trace-Ability Inc, a local startup that develops an automated analytical platform for QC of radiopharmaceuticals. His role centers around identifying innovative solutions to unique challenges, and bringing a multidisciplinary team to implement it in the real world. His introduction to mass spectrometry was in graduate school in Dr. Fernandez-Lima's Lab at Florida International University. His work was instrumental in the design of the Bruker TIMS-MRMS instrument based on the Solarix FT-ICR MS. Since moving to the LA area he has been a part of this community and would love to contribute to its success and growth. His vision is to bring closer the LAMMS community with industry partners to enhance collaborations and provide opportunities for students. 

 Markus was born and raised in Germany where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry at the University of Wuppertal before getting an offer for a Ph.D. position in the group of Prof. Dr. Benter. He joined his lab for the Ph.D. and one year of postdoc focusing on fundamental research about mass spectrometry and later semiconductor manufacturing processes. He then went abroad to deepen his knowledge about both mass spectrometry and semiconductors in Dr. Michael Eller's group at the California State University Northridge where he is currently in the position of a postdoctoral researcher. 

Since graduating from Southampton University, UK, with a PhD in protein purification, protein chemistry, biochemistry, and mass spectrometric analytics in 1998, Iain has pursued a career within industry. From 2011 to the present, at Amgen Research, California, USA, is where Iain leads an analytical characterization group of 13 FTEs, across three sites and two countries. Iain is the main and corresponding author and co-author of now over 70 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, where the subject matter ranging from fundamental ion mobility instrumentation and applications; small molecule MD and DFT calculations, drug-target screening and associated medicinal chemistry analytical support, to Fourier transform ion cyclotron protein, mAb, MsAb and ADC analysis and Opinion and Critical Insight articles. Iain is the inventor/co-inventor of 7 MS-related patents.
Iain has extensive experience using multiple MS instruments, such as QToFs (Waters and Agilent), Orbitraps, Ion Mobility instruments (TWIM and RF-confining) and FT-ICR (Bruker) which I have used for the analysis of peptides, proteins (both native and denatured) nucleic acids and multiple types of small molecule MS and tandem-MS accurate Mw, structural elucidation and empirical formulae derivation and associated MS control and processing software. Iain is a highly active participant in many analytical focused conferences such ASMS, PITTCON, PEGS, SciX-FACSS, CASSS, IMSC, SLAS and Discovery-on-Target. Iain co-organized the 2018 ASMS Sanibel Meeting and has co-chaired ASMS Workshops (Native-MS 2019-2021) and has chaired sessions at ASMS (2016 Fundamentals Session), PITTCON, PEGS and Discovery on Target. Iain has also given multiple oral presentation at national and international conferences. In January 2019 Iain was nominated to the JASMS Editorial Advisory Board. In April 2020 Iain was nominated as a Fellow (FRSC) to the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK. In August 2021 Iain co-organised and co-edited the August edition of the JASMS Special Focus Edition: MS in Industry and High-throughput in Mass Spectrometry. Iain is the recipient of the ASMS 2014 Al Yergy Award. Iain strives to and continues to be a strong advocate and champion of MS technologies and applications within the biopharmaceutical industry.