Professor Facundo M. Fernández

Facundo M. Fernández
Regents’ Professor and Vasser-Woolley Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract

Spatial Metabolomics Technologies: Ultrahigh Mass Resolution, Cyclic Ion Mobility, Single Cell Multimodal, Triboelectric Nanogenerators

The highly dynamic nature of metabolites and their abundances makes metabolomics a powerful endpoint of the ‘omics’ cascade, yielding a molecular profile that is closest to the physiological phenotype. The metabolome of a given organism is the total collection of biologically-active small molecules with molecular weights lower than about ~1.5 kDa. This includes endogenous molecules that are biosynthesized by metabolic networks in primary metabolism, specialized secondary metabolite signaling or defense molecules, molecules derived from diet or environmental exposures (the exposome), and molecules derived from the biosynthetic interactions with associated microbes (the microbiome). 

The vast chemical diversity of the metabolome (lipids, sugars, amino acids, etc.), and its wide dynamic range (mM to fM) implies that no single analytical method can adequately profile all metabolites in a single metabolomics experiment. Along these lines, nested separations that work in a time frame compatible with mass spectrometry, such as those performed by ion mobility, are playing a key analytical role to increase peak capacity and to identify metabolites through ion mobility collision cross section measurements. Further, localization of metabolites at the tissue level with imaging mass spectrometry allows linking their abundance with changes observed in biofluids. New types of ion sources enable the analysis of minute samples, better coverage of non- polars, and generation of structural information for lipids. Machine learning enables extracting information from the massive datasets generated. In this seminar, I will present the various technologies involved in spatial metabolomics in a non-targeted metabolomics context, describe our work on traumatic brain injury and ovarian cancer, and discuss new mass spectrometry approaches for imaging.

Facundo M. Fernández

Prof. Facundo M. Fernández is the Regents’ Professor and Vasser-Woolley Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his BSc and MSc in Chemistry from the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1995, and his PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the same University, in 1999. Between 2000 and 2001, he was a postdoc in the research group of Richard N. Zare in the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University. Between 2002- 2003, he joined the group of Vicki Wysocki in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Arizona as a senior postdoc and then research scientist. Prof. Fernandez is internationally renowned for his work in bioanalytical chemistry, with his research focusing on the development of new tools for assaying small volume samples, tissues, and single cells, and applying such methods to better understanding diseases such as cancer, CF and IBD. He is the author of 220+ peer- reviewed publications, has presented 225+ invited lectures, and graduated 31 Ph.D. and M.Sc. students. He is also the academic director for the Systems Mass Spectrometry Core (SyMS-C) at the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech, where he oversees a portfolio numerous mass spectrometers from most major vendors. He has received several awards, including the NSF CAREER award, the CETL/BP Teaching award, the Ron A. Hites best paper award from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and the Beynon award from Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, among others. He serves on the editorial board of The Analyst and as an Associate editor for the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry and Frontiers in Chemistry. His current research team of 15-20 people is interested in metabolomics, development of new ionization sources, MS imaging, machine learning and ion mobility spectrometry. The research is supported by agencies such as NIH, NSF, NASA, IARPA and DoD. In his free time, he enjoys camping and off-roading with his family, kayaking, and climbing summits to connect with other nerdy people using a tiny ham radio.

Hosted by Professor Varun Gadkari