My happy place.

I spend most of my time on automating and miniaturizing standard workflows to make them more accessible to other mass spectrometrists and interdisciplinary laboratories. For this I work together with Cellenion, a company specializing in picolitre (which is a millionth of a liter) pipetting and cell isolation. We use acoustic pulses in combination with a small glass capillary to process samples that are only visible under a microscope. Currently, our workflow allows to collect samples, process them and perform mass spectrometry acquisition without error-prone manual sample pipetting.

Why single-cell proteomics?

• Proteomics defines the study of proteins at a given time in the analyzed sample.
• Proteins are the main driver of cell identity and their function.
• Different cell types execute different roles and work together to form tissues.
• These complex networks and interactions are imprinted with signaling molecules.
• With mass spectrometry-based proteomics we profile changes in these signaling cascades defining health or disease.
• To resolve this complex interplay we need to look closer at individual cell types or even single cells.

For this we have developed and continuously work on a streamlined workflow using our proteoCHIPs to overcome some of the main hurdles detailed in the article below.

Outreach and scientific training.

As a first generation graduate, science communication is very important to me, for which I take up every opportunity to engage about my research. I enjoy teaching classes and mentoring students throughout their development into independent researchers.