The award ceremony was held at the Imaging MS: Present and Future of Multimodal Studies workshop at the ASMS Congress on Wednesday, June 8 in San Antonio, Texas in the presence of Vilmos Kertesz, (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a Department of Energy facility) and Raf Van de Plas (Delft, University of Technology), coordinators of the Imaging MS Interest Group.

The panel of judges was chaired by ImaBiotech's CEO, Jonathan Stauber, and composed of three distinguished individuals within the MSI's community:

-          Pierre Chaurand, Associate Professor at the University of Montreal (Montreal, Canada)

-          Richard Drake, Smartstate Endowed Chair in Proteomics at Medical University of South Carolina (South Carolina, USA)

-          Sheerin Shahidi-Latham, Scientist and Metabolomics/Imaging MS Group Leader at Genentech (California, USA)

ImaBiotech and the review committee would like to thank all of the participants for their entries and hard work.  “It was a pleasure to read more than thirty applications, which made it challenging for the panel of judges to ultimately select the winner for the 2016 MSI Award,” commented Jonathan Stauber during the award ceremony. John Cahill PhD, the 2016 MSI Award winner, made great developments within the Van Berkel group, showing great development of micro-sampling methods allowing quantitative and micron resolution imaging technique. In 2014, John Cahill received his PhD in Analytical Chemistry at the University of California San Diego with Professor Kimberly Prather. Between 2009 and 2014 John Cahill has developed new techniques in aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ATOFMS) to explore atmospheric processes, material synthesis, and biological cell characterization.  Since 2014, John Cahill is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Gary J. Van Berkel's department. John Cahill has developed and applied new techniques in ambient laser ablation followed by secondary ionization for use in Mass Spectrometry Imaging. Since 2011, he has written more than 17 publications in the field of MSI.

ImaBiotech has developed this award three years ago in order to promote innovation in the field of Mass Spectrometry Imaging. The MSI Award recipient is awarded $5,000 for the best innovative project using MS imaging techniques (development and applications with every MS Imaging techniques such as SIMS, DESI, LAESI, MALDI…).