Can you think of three words to capture your experience at the Metabolomics 2024 (#MetSoc2024) conference?
For me, these are community, excellence and joy. I’ve shared this with many of you already – at the conference, at the airport, on LinkedIn and after my return to Innsbruck – but every time I attend a MetSoc meeting, I feel more connected and in tune with the metabolomics community. I see how the work we do at biocrates resonates with the ambitions of researchers in the field and leave with a sense of where we should go next to support the growth of this vibrant community.
Community
At biocrates, we’re not just creating products that serve a need: we’re also striving to support the scientific community and exchange knowledge on best practices, trends and future developments. To that end, MetSoc is one of my favorite events each year to connect with experts and keen users of metabolomics.
In fact, “community” is one of biocrates’ core values, which we apply both within and outside the organization. Many of you will have a sense of our external approach to community through The Metabolomist podcast and regular blog articles we post on LinkedIn.
People often ask me why we do this. Why does biocrates share this information free of charge? The answer is that it’s one of the ways we give back to our community. It’s how we create connections that may one day open the door to collaboration, but more importantly, allow us to disseminate some of the work and insights that are generated behind closed doors in industry and rarely shared with the broader community.
At MetSoc this year, I had the opportunity to showcase some of our work during the machine learning session on Wednesday June 19th, where I presented our latest peak picking algorithm. I am used to giving talks at conferences, and I did so many, many times as an academic. But when you come from industry, being invited to give a talk on the sole merit of your abstract is a noteworthy event. It’s also a wonderful recognition of the fact that work within industry also contributes to the growth of the scientific community. The generous feedback I received from you after this talk also affirmed this idea.
Excellence
Another value that shone through at the conference was a commitment to excellence. Striving for high quality data, standardization, and developing expertise all infused the various sessions I attended. From analytical measurements to data processing and interpretation, we need such a broad variety of tools, and it’s clear the community is hard at work to build and improve on them.
The workshop on “FAIR and open data sharing through repositories” made a particular impression on me. I enjoyed seeing how repositories all over the world are embracing FAIR principles and considering how data generated with biocrates’ technology fits in. Many of our customers already share their data in these repositories, allowing other scientists to re-use their datasets for meta-analyses. This is made possible in part by the standardized nature of our data and our software, WebIDQ. We are working to make this process even easier in future as part of our mission to make metabolomics accessible to facilitate breakthroughs in biomedical research.
I am always on the look out for new and better ways to analyze and integrate data, and this conference provided me with many inspiring cues. The diversity of approaches in the “Multiomics and data integration” session was a wonderful source of inspiration. I was also delighted to see the latest progress on the combination of metabolomics with microbiome data, which in my opinion represents one of the most promising applications of both technologies. If you want to hear more about this, listen to one of the latest episodes of the podcast with Marc-Emmanuel Dumas, which was recorded during this conference!
Joy
A conference is more than the sum of its talks and posters. The place, people and organization are a huge part of the experience. There’s an energy and excitement that comes from the opportunity to connect with like-minded people (which is no doubt why we were so enthusiastic to meet each other in person again in Valencia after the pandemic). Carmen and Marissa, who joined me at the conference, capture this sentiment perfectly in their summaries below.
A stand-out moment for me was being invited by the Early Career Members’ Network (EMN) to lead a roundtable at the Career Night together with Farhana Pinu from the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Ltd. This was a lovely opportunity to meet many early career scientists and help them prepare for a life in science. If I had to sum up the advice we exchanged in one sentence, I’d say: talk to people, ask for help and don’t be afraid of change. The world of metabolomics is rapidly evolving, and we are all adapting and growing with it.
Overall, to be able to enjoy my favorite metabolomics conference in Japan, a country that holds a special place in my heart, was a truly special experience.
Did the conference spark joy for you too? Let me know which three words best describe your #MetSoc2024 on LinkedIn! You can also read more about Carmen and Marissa’s experience below.
Carmen Ludwig-Papst, Ph.D. | Director Business Development
Thank you, Japan! This year’s Metabolomics 2024 conference was in a well-chosen location with the whole conference on one floor and round tables for discussions and interactions between poster sessions and during breaks. A special thanks to the local organizers who were consistently helpful, efficient and friendly.
Scientifically, the Metabolomics Society Meeting has always offered great key notes and inspiring talks, and this year’s was no exception. The conference’s scientific impact was high. Creatively, we saw posters designed by AI and metabolomics content depicted in a manga style. And technologically, in line with the times, we listened to a bold and optimistic session on the use of big data and AI-supported data interpretation.
Marissa Jones, Ph.D. | Business Development Manager
I had a great time at the MetSoc conference in Osaka, Japan, this June. It was a valuable experience where I connected with certified lab customers, received feedback from field experts, and met new scientists. During my poster presentation titled, “How reliable are at-home blood sampling devices? Benchmarking metabolite stability in several sampling devices for analysis by targeted metabolomics”, I had insightful conversations about making metabolomics more accessible for at-home sampling. If you’d like to see the whole poster or discuss, connect with me on LinkedIn. I also enjoyed interacting with other poster presenters around me, including one with manga-style artwork and another focused on using GC-MS to analyze newborn baby scents.
In addition to presenting our work on at-home sampling, I was honored to be a discussion leader at the Early Career Members’ Network (EMN) Career Night. It was a great opportunity to connect with early career researchers and share my experience. I continued to engage with this group throughout the conference and even joined them for karaoke, combining networking with fun.
Overall, the MetSoc conference provided a great mix of professional growth, customer engagement and enjoyable experiences, leaving me feeling energized and optimistic about the future of metabolomics and the opportunities ahead.