Research Seminar Featuring Dr. Tao Huan and Dr. Warth Benedikt

Join us for a virtual research seminar on Wednesday, January 27, 2020 from 9:00am-10:30am to have Dr. Tao Huan and Dr. Warth Benedikt with us.

How to Join the Zoom Meeting

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 670 7646 7326
Passcode: 507362

Addressing Big Data Challenges in Metabolomics-Guided Exposome Research Dr. Tao Huan, SEC Faculty Member Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of British Columbia Global metabolomics is an emerging field in postgenomic biology that correlates the comprehensive analysis of small molecules in biological systems with phenotypes and biological processes. Over the past decades, there have been many innovative developments in analytical strategies and informatics, making it possible to incorporate metabolomics techniques into the understanding of exposome, the totality of exposures that a human body can be exposed to. This talk will focus on Huan lab’s current progresses in analytical technologies and bioinformatics that address the big data challenges in metabolomics-guided exposome research, including metabolomic data processing, statistical analysis and metabolite identification. Dr. Huan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the synergistic development of analytical chemistry and bioinformatics for mass spectroscopy-based metabolomics and its application in biological research. Dr. Huan has published 45 peer-reviewed research articles (cited > 1500) in high-impact journals including Nature Methods, Nature Protocols, Cell Metabolism, and Analytical Chemistry. Dr. Huan is currently a steering committee and faculty member of UBC Social Exposome Cluster. In addition, Dr. Huan is affiliated faculty members in the Graduate Program in Bioinformatics as well as Genome Science and Technology (GSAT) program.

Measuring the Chemical Exposome: Delusion or Next Frontier? Dr. Benedikt Warth, Invited Speaker Department of Food Chemistry and Toxicology, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria While the concept of the exposome received increasing attention during the last decade, analytical workflows for assessing chemical exposure in a non-targeted and comprehensive manner are still underdeveloped. This presentation will discuss novel targeted and non-targeted mass spectrometry-based approaches for assessing environmental and food-related exposures and their effects in human samples. Analytical and bioinformatic progress and limitations will be highlighted and the idea of drug-exposome interactions, a new concept in precision medicine, presented. Benedikt Warth is an Associate Professor at the University of Vienna, where he founded the Global Exposomics and Biomonitoring working group in 2017. Before returning to Austria, he was an Erwin-Schrödinger fellow at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California where he developed and applied novel metabolomics technology to research questions in the fields of cancer research, exposure sciences, and systems toxicology. His current research focus is in the area of omics-scale exposure assessment and analytical food chemistry to better understand the in vivo and in vitro effects of environmental and food contaminants. He has received nine scientific awards including the Young Investigators Award and the Feigl-Prize from the Austrian Society of Analytical Chemistry and is author or co-author of about 95 peer-reviewed publications (H-index: 35; Number of times cited: >3500).