LA MS DAY
This is our inaugural LA Mass Spec Day, in collaboration with UCLA, which will take place in person on October 16th, 2026, at the Cedars Sinai Pacific Design Centers.
LA Mass Spec Day serves as a significant platform for networking and education for early-career scientists who are on the cusp of establishing their own research labs or venturing into the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Our one-day symposium, hosted by LAMMS and Cedars Sinai, provides a unique opportunity for applicants to showcase their mass spectrometry-related research.
With an anticipated audience of approximately 75 postdoctoral fellows, alumni, vendors, and participating faculty from universities across the Southern California region, the event promises to facilitate the exchange of ideas and foster collaboration.
The address of the venue is:
Cedars Sinai
Pacific Design Center (Green Building)
8687 Melrose Avenue, CA, 90069
We thank our sponsors Protein Metrics, Sciex, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Waters for making this event possible.
Dr. Keriann Backus
Biography
Keriann Backus is an Associate Professor with appointments in the Departments of Biological Chemistry and Chemistry and Biochemistry. Dr. Backus received a BS in Chemistry and BA in Latin American Studies from Brown University. Her doctoral research was conducted in the laboratories of Benjamin Davis (Oxford) and Clifton Barry (NIH, NIAID) as a 2007 Rhodes Scholar and an NIH Oxford Cambridge Scholar. Dr. Backus completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at The Scripps Research Institute in the laboratory of Benjamin Cravatt.
Dr. Backus is best known for developing pioneering chemoproteomic methods that dramatically expanded the scope of potentially druggable targets. Her methods contributed to the discovery of multiple lead compounds currently in clinical trials for autoimmune and cancer indications. At UCLA, Dr. Backus’s research group develops and applies cutting edge proteomic technologies to broadly shed light on the functional and therapeutically relevant proteome. Dr. Backus's research has been recognized by numerous awards, including a Beckman Young Investigator, DARPA Young Faculty Award, a V Scholar Research Award, Packard Fellowship, NIH New Innovator Award, and Ono Breakthrough Science Initiative Award.
Dr. Daniil Boiko
Biography
As a researcher and engineer, Daniil specializes in the intersection of machine learning, AI, and chemistry. His career spans over several years of pioneering advancements in molecular modeling, AI-driven drug discovery, and scientific automation.
He was a founding member of the technical staff at a stealth startup, where he led the development of cutting-edge AI models for pharmaceutical applications, including liver toxicity prediction and molecular optimization. His work focuses on enhancing drug discovery pipelines by integrating explainable AI and scalable deep learning architectures.
Additionally, I received a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, where his research has led to significant achievements in geometric deep learning, enzyme catalysis prediction models, and application of large language models for automating scientific research. He collaborated with industry leaders, including Novartis and Alphabet’s X, pushing the boundaries of AI applications in science.
His previous experience includes roles as a machine learning engineer at Mail.ru Group (VK) and a researcher at the N.D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, where he applied AI to material discovery and scaled machine learning infrastructure for real-time applications.
He is passionate about using AI to solve complex scientific problems, building systems that drive innovation in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, and contributing to advancements in deep learning. He is always open to exploring new challenges and opportunities at the cutting edge of AI and drug discovery.
Title of the talk: Reading Chemistry Between the Peaks: Mass Spectrometry for Autonomous Discovery