Speakers - 2026
Prof. Gabelica is a pioneer and world leading researcher in nucleic acids native MS. She obtained a PhD in Chemistry in 2002 at the University of Liège, Belgium. After a postdoc in Frankfurt as Humboldt fellow, she rejoined the MS Laboratory in Liège where she obtained a permanent position as FNRS research associate in 2005. In 2013, she joined the Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie (Bordeaux, France) with an appointment as research director of the French Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) to study nucleic acids biophysics by MS.
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Valerie Gabelica
Professor
University of Geneva
She served as the director of the IECB from 2021 to 2023, obtained an ERC Consolidator grant in 2014, and was awarded several research prizes, including the Heinrich Emanuel Merck Award for Analytical Sciences and Inserm research prize in 2022. In January 2024, she was appointed as Full Professor in Analytical Chemistry (School of Pharmaceutical Sciences) at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Her current research interests are MS fundamentals (ionization, fragmentation, structures) and applications to native MS and oligonucleotides.
Dr. Stephan Kamrad
University of Cambridge
Dr. Kamrad holds a BA in Natural Sciences, an MRes in Computational Biology and a PhD in Microbial Genetics. At the University of Cambridge, Stephan’s research investigates the impact of xenobiotics such as drugs, pesticides and pollutants on the gut microbiome. Among these, Drper- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are of particular concern due to their environmental persistence and human toxicity. His talk will describe the use of LC-MS and FIB-SIMS to investigate interactions of gut bacterial cells with PFAS. This revealed that bacteria can bioaccumulate long-chain perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids intracellularly. In mouse, administration of PFAS-accumulating bacteria increases PFAS excretion via faeces, suggesting avenues for new interventions to support clearance from the human body.
Dr. John Cormican
Frankfurt University Clinic
Dr. Cormican is an expert in high-performance computing and data science. He holds an MSc in High Performance Computing from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD in Bioinformatics from the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen, Germany. His doctoral research focused on the use of mass spectrometry (MS) for molecular identification. He is currently a staff scientist at University Clinic Frankfurt, where he works on downstream analysis of mass spectrometry data. His primary research interest lies in advancing MS-based methodologies for clinical and translational research applications. He is passionate about software development and is committed to making computational tools accessible to a broad scientific community.
Dr. Fiona Mc Gillicuddy
University College Dublin
Dr. McGillicuddy is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at UCD and Principal Investigator of the Cardiometabolic Research Group. Her research focuses on how inflammation and metabolic dysfunction interact to drive cardiovascular disease, particularly through effects on HDL biology and reverse cholesterol transport. She completed her PhD in Pharmacology at UCD in 2006 before undertaking postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania with Muredach Reilly, where she showed that acute inflammation impairs HDL efflux capacity and hepatic cholesterol trafficking, helping establish inflammation-induced HDL dysfunction as a clinically relevant phenomenon. She later returned to Ireland to work with Helen Roche, studying IL-1 signalling in obesity-induced insulin resistance. Awarded a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship in 2012, she established an independent research programme demonstrating that chronic low-grade inflammation in obesity disrupts reverse cholesterol transport, while replacing saturated fats with monounsaturated fats can partially restore HDL function. Her current research focuses on the HDL proteome and its biomarker potential. Her group has developed methods to isolate HDL and a targeted proteomics assay measuring over 200 peptides to improve cardiometabolic risk stratification in obesity, in collaboration with Stephen Pennington. Ongoing work aims to identify protein panels that predict metabolic complications of obesity, particularly obesity-associated liver disease.
Vincent O'Brien
Pfzier
Vincent, a Sr. Research Analyst at Pfizer, is a graduate of the MSc in Analytical Chemistry in UCC where he carried out his master’s research in conjunction with TU Delft and the Netherlands Forensic Institute. Subsequently he worked in the Wageningen Food Safety Institute as part of the Horizon 2020 project FoodSmartphone where he investigated the coupling of lateral flow screening assays to Orbitrap systems for confirmatory analysis. After returning to Ireland, he spent 5 years using LCMS to support R&D efforts and solve customer queries in the Analytical Solutions Group in Henkel. Within the Process Development Centre, Pfizer, Ringaskiddy he now supports second generation drug development. Vincent has a wealth of experience on high resolution mass spectrometry, especially ToF based systems, and is more recently focusing on QQQ and online LCMS analysis.
Professor Ger Clarke
University College Cork
Gerard Clarke is Professor of Neurobehavioural Science in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioural Science and a Principal Investigator in APC Microbiome Ireland at UCC. His research interests include the impact of the gut microbiome on brain and behaviour across the life span, microbial regulation of tryptophan metabolism and translational biomarkers of stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders. With over 260 publications and a H-Index of 97, he was included in Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Group Highly Cited Researchers list for 6 consecutive years from 2019-2024. He has recently co-authored a book titled Microbiota Brain Axis: A Neuroscience Primer which provides a framework for understanding microbial regulation of brain function and behaviour.
