HUPO 2025 Speakers

Plenary Speakers

Leonard Foster

Professor of Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Director of the Life Sciences Institute at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada

Leonard Foster

Professor of Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Director of the Life Sciences Institute at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada

Dr. Leonard Foster is Professor of Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Director of the Life Sciences Institute at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Dr. Foster grew up in northern BC and earned his B.Sc at SFU in 1996. He moved to the University of Toronto to complete a doctoral degree in the cell biology and biochemistry of insulin’s effects on adipocytes. From there he went to the University of Southern Denmark to study mass spectrometry and proteomics with Matthias Mann. In 2005 he took up his current position at UBC. Dr. Foster’s group at UBC develops and applies quantitative proteomic methods to study host-pathogen interactions in a variety of systems.

Samira Mubareka

Department of Laboratory Medicine and Molecular Diagnostics Division of Infectious Diseases, Toronto, Canada

Samira Mubareka

Department of Laboratory Medicine and Molecular Diagnostics Division of Infectious Diseases, Toronto, Canada

Dr. Samira is Mubareka is a virologist, medical microbiologist and practicing infectious disease physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. Her research program has focused on respiratory and zoonotic virus transmission. Most recently, to address important research gaps in public health at the human-animal interface, and she has been co-leading wildlife population pathogen surveillance and characterization initiatives around emerging and high consequence viral zoonotic pathogens. This work garnered the 2021 Janet Rossant Lectureship, the T. J. Marrie Lectureship and the Richard G. Hegele Award for Excellence in Research and Innovation. Samira served on the Chief Science Advisor of Canada, Dr. M. Nemer’s COVID-19 Expert Panel, the Implementation Committee of the Genome Canada-led Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network (CanCOGeN) VirusSeq project, ISED’s Therapeutics Task Force, and the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. She chaired the Royal Society of Canada’s COVID-19 One Health Working Group, the RSC’s scientific committees for the G7 One Health Research Summit (2022) and is a CIHR-PHAC Applied Public Health Chair in Pandemic and Health Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Recovery.

Paola Picotti

Full Professor, the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zurich, Germany

Paola Picotti

Full Professor, the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zurich, Germany

Paola Picotti is Full Professor at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zurich. Her group develops mass spectrometry-based proteomics technologies and applies these tools to the study of neurodegenerative diseases. A major contribution of the Picotti group is the development of an approach to probe the structural changes of thousands of proteins simultaneously and in situ (LiP-MS). Using LiP-MS, the group characterized the determinants of proteome thermostability, mapped protein-small molecule interactions and demonstrated that global structural analyses provide a new type of molecular readout for pathophysiological changes. Prof. Picotti was awarded the EMBO Gold Medal, the Latsis Prize, the Cotter Award of the US-HUPO, the HUPO Discovery in proteomics sciences award, the SGMS award, the EMBO Young Investigator Award, the Friedrich Miescher Award, the Juan- Pablo Albar award of the European Proteome Association, two ERC Grants (Starting and Consolidator), the Rössler prize and the Leopoldina and EMBO memberships.

John Yates III

Professor in the Departments of Molecular Medicine and Neurobiology at The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego, USA

John Yates III

Professor in the Departments of Molecular Medicine and Neurobiology at The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego, USA

John R. Yates is the Ernest W. Hahn Professor in the Departments of Molecular Medicine and Neurobiology at The Scripps Research Institute. He received a B.A. in Zoology and an M.S. in Chemistry from the University of Maine. He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Virginia with Donald F. Hunt. He performed postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Leroy E. Hood at Caltech. His research interests include development of integrated methods for tandem mass spectrometry analysis of protein mixtures, bioinformatics using mass spectrometry data, and biological studies involving proteomics. He is the lead inventor of the SEQUEST software for correlating tandem mass spectrometry data to sequences in the database and developer of the shotgun proteomics technique for the analysis of protein mixtures. He has received numerous awards including the 2015 ACS’s Analytical Chemistry award, 2015 The Ralph N. Adams Award in Bioanalytical Chemistry, the 2018 Thomson Medal from the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation, the 2019 John B. Fenn award from the ASMS, the 2019 HUPO Award in Discovery, and the 2024 Pittsburgh Society Award in Analytical Chemistry. He was ranked as one of the Top 100 Chemists for the decade, 2000-2010 and the Clarivate List of Highly Cited Scientists in 2015 and 2019-2023. He has published over 1100 scientific articles with >180,000 citations, and an H index of 209 (Google Scholar). Dr. Yates served as an Associate Editor at Analytical Chemistry for 15 years and is currently the Editor in Chief at the Journal of Proteome Research.

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HUPO 2025 Speakers

Plenary Speakers

Leonard Foster

Samira Mubareka

Paola Picotti

John Yates III

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