Michael MacCoss
University of Washington

Nathan Yates
University of Pittsburgh

Michael MacCoss has been working with mass spectrometry instrumentation since 1994 when he was an undergraduate in a stable isotope geochemistry lab at the University of Vermont.  He became interested in biomedical applications working in Dr. Patrick Griffin’s protein mass spectrometry lab at Merck Research Laboratories during two summer internships in 1995 and 1996.  In 2001, he completed a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry with Professor Dwight Matthews in the development of stable isotope and mass spectrometry methodologies for the measurement of human amino acid and protein metabolism.  Dr. MacCoss moved to The Scripps Research Institute to work with Professor John R. Yates III as a postdoctoral fellow where he worked on methodology and software for many areas of proteomics, ranging from the improved characterization of post-translational modifications and the quantitative analysis of complex protein mixtures.  Dr. MacCoss joined the University of Washington in 2004 as an Assistant Professor of Genome Sciences, where his lab has focused on the development and application of mass spectrometry based technologies for the high throughput characterization of complex protein mixtures.  In 2009 he was promoted to Associate Professor.

The MacCoss lab is actively involved in the development and application of mass spectrometry based technologies for the characterization of complex protein mixtures.  These methodologies are being developed to improve our understanding of biology of the molecular, cellular, and whole organism level.  Our laboratory has been working on technology for: 1) automating sample preparation methods for protein characterization by mass spectrometry; 2) developing in vivo stable isotope methods for studying protein metabolism; 3) increasing the dynamic range of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for the analysis of peptides; and 4) developing state of the art and robust tools for the analysis of mass spectrometry data.  We have been working on these methods predominantly in the model organisms C. elegans and S. cerevisiae, although our long-term goal is to have technologies robust enough to handle the high-throughput characterization of human clinical samples.

Dr. MacCoss has been actively in the Proteomics Research Group of the ABRF and in instruction and/or organization of >20 educational workshops for ASMS, HUPO, ABRF, USHUPO, and privately sponsored events..

Nathan Yates received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Allegheny College, doctorate in analytical chemistry from the University of Florida with Prof. Richard A. Yost, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Donald F. Hunt at the University of Virginia.  He was previously a Scientific Director in the Department of Exploratory and Translational Science at Merck & Co., Inc. where he led the Molecular Biomarker Assay Development Group in New Jersey.  Dr. Yates recently accepted an academic appointment as a visiting associate professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology at the University of Pittsburgh and will also direct the Biomedical Mass Spectrometry Center in the Schools of the Health Sciences.

Dr. Yates’ research explores the development and applications of new measurement techniques for the detection and characterization of biologically relevant molecules by mass spectrometry.  He was introduced to computer applications in ion trap mass spectrometry at the 7th annual Asilomar conference in 1989, and continues to be fascinated by the use of computational analytics to discover and understand patterns present in large scale LC-MS data sets.  At Merck and Co., Dr. Yates and Dr. Ronald Hendrickson developed the technique of Differential Mass Spectrometry and established it as an efficient and powerful approach for biomarker discovery.  At the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Yates plans to develop cloud based data organization and search tools so that chemists, biologists, doctors and eventually patients can more readily benefit from biological mass spectrometry data.

Dr. Yates has co-authored 30 articles including two book chapters and two patents.  He has served as a member of the NIH Shared Instrument Review Panel, chair of the ABRF Proteomics Research Group, and is a current member of the US HUPO Board of Directors.  He has been a member of ASMS since 1989 and has co-instructed short courses on “Quadrupole Ion Trap Mass Spectrometry” and “Case Studies in Quantitative Proteomics.".