ABOUT US

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Ashli Simone is a new and 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 Chair of LAMMS. 

  Si Cheng is an enthusiastic Mass Spectrometrist and thrilled to serve as the Vice Chair of LAMMS. She is currently a MS specialist/LC-MS Account Manager at Waters Corporation. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in biology at Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (UPPA), France, where she gained her first experience in mass spectrometry. She received her Ph.D. in analytical chemistry focused on ionization source development and applications at Ohio University and then became a senior mass spec scientist at Eurofins before joining Waters. She loves travelling, hiking, and snorkeling. Her goal is to promote the applications of mass spectrometry and share mass spec knowledge with scientists in all fields. 

  Dominique B. Figueroa is excited to be the new secretary of LAMMS and energized to build community within the Los Angeles mass spectrometry ecosystem. Applying her training in mass spectrometry, she works with Thermo Fisher Scientific. Prior to Thermo, she served as a Field Applications Scientist at PerkinElmer and Shimadzu. She completed her PhD in Pharmacology from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland and continued her training at the University of Maryland Baltimore, School of Pharmacy Mass Spectrometry Center. Her first exposure to mass spectrometry was through MALDI and Orbitrap instrumentation at Stanford University where she got her Bachelor’s degree in Biology. 

  Dmitry Eremin is a freshly minted Treasurer 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. 

 Heidi Vitrac’s academic career in France and in the US has centered around membrane biology and lipid-protein interactions. As an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, her research focused on the crosstalk between membrane phospholipid metabolism, bacterial physiology, and stress adaptation. Throughout her research career, she adopted multidisciplinary analytical, biophysical, and biochemical approaches, including multiple modes of chromatography and mass spectrometry (proteomics, lipidomics, and metabolomics) to understand the mechanisms of lipid-dependent defects in the development and progression of diseases. Heidi joined Bruker Daltonics in May 2023 as a Business Development Specialist, where she serves as a technical expert and market manager for Proteomics analysis in North America’s West region. 

  Joseph A. Loo, Ph.D. is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Biological Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also a member of UCLA/Dept. of Energy Institute for Genomics and Proteomics and the UCLA Molecular Biology Institute. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry working with Professor Fred McLafferty at Cornell University and was a postdoctoral fellow and Senior Research Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with Dr. Richard Smith. Prior to UCLA, Dr. Loo was an Associate Research Fellow and Group Leader at Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research/Pfizer. His group uses mass spectrometry and proteomics strategies, including top-down MS, native MS, ion mobility, and label-free quantification, to characterize proteins, post-translation modifications and protein complexes. He has published over 350 papers and book chapters. Dr. Loo is currently on the Editorial Boards of several scientific journals, including Mass Spectrometry Reviews and Clinical Proteomics, and was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (2016-2022). He has held leadership and advisory positions with scientific organizations, including the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) and the US Human Proteome Organization (US HUPO); currently he is the Vice President for Programs for ASMS. He was elected as a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2021.