Ruedi Aebersold is one of the pioneers in proteomics. He is known for developing methods that have found wide application in analytical protein chemistry like a new class of reagents termed Isotope Coded Affinity Tag (ICAT) reagents used in quantitative mass spectrometry. Ruedi and his team of researchers use the protein profiles determined by this method to differentiate cells in different states, such as noncancerous versus cancerous cells, and to systematically study how cells respond to external stimuli. These "snapshot" profiles indicate which cells contain abnormal levels of certain proteins. This is expected to lead to new diagnostic markers for disease and to a more complete understanding of the biochemical processes that control and constitute cell physiology. Ruedi serves on the Scientific Advisory Committees of numerous academic and private sector research organizations and is a member of several editorial boards in the fields of protein science, genomics, and proteomics. Ruedi obtained his Ph.D. in Cellular Biology at the Biocenter of the University of Basel in 1983. Ruedi co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle before relocating to ETH in Zurich.

Carl is Chairman of the Department of Immunotechnology, Lund University and program Director of the Strategic Centre for Translational Cancer Research. His main research interest has been antibody engineering for the generation of human therapeutic antibodies. In the last 8-9 years the interest has also focused on array-based oncoproteomics. He is a permanent member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences

Ralph A. Bradshaw was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and received degrees from Colby College (Waterville, ME), and Duke University (Durham, NC). He was a post-doctoral fellow at Indiana University and the University of Washington and served on the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine, (St. Louis, MO) (1969-82) and the University of California, Irvine (1982 -06) (now emeritus). He is currently a professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Deputy Director of the NCRR Mass Spectrometry Facility at UCSF. He has published more than 350 scientific articles, has held numerous elected offices in learned societies and has served on the editorial board of over a dozen journals. He is presently Co-editor of Molecular & Cellular Proteomics, which he helped to initiate in 2001. His research interests are in the structure and function of proteins, the regulation of N-terminal post-translational processing and the proteomics of signal transduction as induced by growth factors and their receptors.

Brian received his B.Sc. in 1969 and his B.Sc. Hons. in 1970, both from the University of Cape Town, in South Africa, and his D.Phil. in 1976 from the University of Oxford. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Manitoba and joined Rockefeller in 1979 as a research associate in Frank H. Field’s laboratory. He was appointed assistant professor in 1981, associate professor in 1985 and professor in 1991. In 1995, he was named the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Professor. His awards include the 2007 HUPO Discovery Award in Proteomics Sciences, the 2002 Frank H. Field and Joe L. Franklin Award for Outstanding Achievement in Mass Spectrometry from the American Chemical Society, the 2000 Bijvoet Medal from Utrecht University and the 1998 American Association for the Advancement of Science Newcombe-Cleveland Prize. He has been awarded 22 United States patents for his inventions.

Michael Crouch is a cell biologist with 20 years experience in the study of cellular receptor signal transduction mechanisms. After completing his PhD at the University of Adelaide, Michael carried out a 3 year postdoctoral fellowship at the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome (USA). There he studied mechanisms of human platelet activation by agents such as thrombin, particularly in relation to cellular signalling. After this period he was awarded a Research Fellowship at the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR) at the Australian National University, during which time he identified mechanisms of control of cell growth by hormone receptors. This led to the award of a 5-year Wellcome Fellowship in 1992, and in 1997 he became a Fellow at the JCSMR, continuing the studies into cellular regulation. In 2001 Michael accepted a position as Principal Research Scientist at GroPep Ltd in Adelaide, and in 2002 took up the position of Director, Screening technologies at TGR BioSciences. This role was expanded in 2008 through his promotion to the position of Chief Scientific Officer at TGR, in which he oversees all of the Company’s R&D.

Methods consuming small sample amounts and allow for sensitive screening of large numbers of putative biomarkers indicative of disease are required to advance biomarker discovery and validation. We present our work on multiplexed PLATM a proximity ligation assay technology were protein analytes are converted to unique DNA amplicons and subsequently detected by high throughput quantitative PCR. These multiplexed profiling panels solve many analytical problems found in biomarker verification, such as sensitivity (femto Molar), multiplexing, throughput, and sample consumption. To illustrate the capacity of our technology, we have in an EU-funded collaborative project generated data on 75 putative cancer biomarkers in 200 samples consuming only 2 uL of precious biobanked plasma in merely two weeks time.

In another incarnation of PLA performed in situ, the assay can precisely quantify proteins and protein interactions in fixed cells and tissues providing localized data visualized by fluorescence microscopy and quantified by subjective single molecule counting. The ability to study protein-protein interactions in situ using coincidence binding by pairs of primary target specific antibodies opens a new realm of biomarker opportunities based on activity of proteins rather than abundance.

Professor Jürgen Götz studied biochemistry at the University of Basel, and earned his PhD in immunology in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Georges Köhler at the Max-Planck-Institute in Freiburg, Germany (1989). After postdoctoral work at UCSF and the Preclinical Research Division at Novartis Ltd in Basel, he established his reputation in the Alzheimer’s field as a research group leader at the University of Zürich (1994–2005). Since 2005, he has been Chair of Molecular Biology and Director of the Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Laboratory at the Brain and Mind Research Institute of the University of Sydney. His major research interests are in the development and analysis of transgenic mouse models for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias using the tools of functional genomics. Furthermore, he is interested in the physiological and pathological functions of the microtubule-associated protein tau.

Rudi Grimm received his Ph.D. in Biology at the University of Munich. After completing a post-doc time at the University of Freiburg/Germany and the Riken Institute in Tokyo/Japan he joined Hewlett-Packard as a senior life science application chemist in 1991. In 1998 he became the head of protein chemistry at the Munich based proteomics company Toplab. In June 1999 he joined Hexal Pharma (now part of Sandoz/Novartis) to establish the Biotech Laboratories for the development of generic recombinant protein drugs (Biosimilars). In September 2002 he re-joined Agilent Technologies as the worldwide proteomics and metabolomics market development manager. In January 2009 he became a director of science and technology at Agilent Technologies. He is author of 114 scientific publications.

Dr. Denis Hochstrasser is the chairman of the Genetic & Laboratory Medicine Department of the Geneva University Hospital and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Switzerland. He is also Head of the Laboratory Medicine Division of the Geneva University Hospital, Switzerland's largest acute hospital. He still practices as a Board certified physician. At the academic level, he is full Professor both to Geneva's Department of Structure Biology & Bioinformatics, Medicine Faculty and to the School of Pharmacy, Sciences Faculty. He was one of the founders of the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics, of the Swiss Centre for Applied Human Toxicology and also of Biobank Swiss Foundation. He is a scientific founder of Geneva Proteomics Inc, Geneva Bioinformatics SA and of Eclosion SA. His research focus on the discovery of clinical biomarkers in brain, pancreas and kidney diseases, in human toxicology and the development of proteomic & clinical chemistry related technologies.

Fuchu is a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World and Director of Chinese National Center of Biomedical Analysis and President of Institutes of Biomedical Sciences Fudan University. he is the Chair of Human Liver Proteome Project, Member of Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) Council, Senior Editor of [Proteomics], Editorial member of [Mol. Cell. Proteomics], President of Chinese Human Proteome Organization (CNHUPO), Vice President of Chinese Association of Genetics. His major fields of research are proteomics and genomics. He found several periodic phenomena of molecular evolution: Development-related evolution of cytokines; Co-evolution of cytokines and their receptors; Modulated evolution of mRNA coding regions and their non-coding regions; Slowing-down evolution of molecules during phylogeny; discovered and cloned hepatopoietin, and characterized its receptor and both autocrine and intracrine signal transduction pathways; established the comprehensive transcriptome and proteome expression profiles of human fetal liver and annotated more than 500 human novel genes and proteins. In addition, his research team identified more than ten susceptibility genes for chronic HBV infection and cancers. Recently, he proposed and initiated the Human Liver Proteome Project (HLPP), the first international life scientific project led by China, which remarkably applauded by international entities, including Nature, Science, Nature Biotechnology. He was awarded National Distinguished Young Scientists Awards, Chinese Young Scientists Award, Qiushi Award for Young Elites in Engineering, and Science and Technology Progress Prize of HO LEUNG HO LEE FOUNDATION; successively received more than 10 prizes, such as State Natural Science Award, National Award for Promotion of Science & Technology. To date, he has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in high impact international journals as corresponding author.

Dr. Hunter is the Director of Proteomics Applications at AB SCIEX. Research interests include the development of mass spectrometry workflows for quantitative proteomics. In particular, Dr Hunter has been focused on using targeted MS techniques for quantitative profiling of protein biomarkers in biological samples.

Carlitto's group focuses on the development of analytical tools in two areas - nutrition and diseases. He is developing mass spectrometry based tools for the discovery of markers for cancer including ovarian, breast, and prostate. His approach is to examine the post-translational modification of proteins particularly in the forms of glycosylation. Carlitto is pioneering the glycomics approach for the early diagnosis of cancer and developing the infrastructure in terms of analytical tools and bioinformatics for glycan based disease marker discovery. He is are also deconstructing the components of mammalian milk to determine what in milk makes it the perfect food for the infant.

Dr Rune Linding lead the Cellular & Molecular Logic Team at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London. He performed his graduate work at the EMBL (Germany), where he pioneered computational signalling biology by developing popular tools like ELM, GlobPlot and DisEMBL for analysing post-translational modifications and intrinsic protein disorder. Dr Linding was Human Frontiers Science Program Postdoctoral Research Fellow jointly with Profs Tony Pawson and Mike Yaffe at Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute (Canada) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), respectively. His postdoctoral work on the cellular phosphorylation networks and development of the NetworKIN algorithm pioneered Integrative Network Biology and led to the discovery of the importance of contextual kinase specificity. At ICR his lab unravelled systems-level models of JNK and EphR kinase networks, demonstrated a link between specificity and oncogenecity of kinases and introduced the concept of Network Medicine. Dr Linding leads the NetPhorest community resource and have pioneered comparative phospho-proteomics and evolutionary studies of signalling networks. Dr Linding founded the Integrative Network Biology initiative (INBi) at the ICR which aims to block cancer metastasis by integration of large-scale, high-dimensional quantitative genomic, proteomic and phenotypic data. The long-term focus of his research group is on studying cellular signal processing and decision making.

Dr. Overall is a Professor, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Metalloproteinase Proteomics and Systems Biology, at the University of British Columbia Center for Blood Research. He was the 2002 CIHR Scientist of the Year, Chaired the 2003 MMP and the 2010 Proteolytic Enzmes and Inhibitors Gordon Research Conferences, and was awarded the University of British Columbia Killam Senior Researcher Award (Science) 2005. He was a visiting scientist at British Biotech, Oxford (1997-1998) and at the Centre for Proteomic Chemistry, Novartis, Switzerland (2004, 2008). His research interests are in positional proteomics for N- and C-terminome analysis, protease proteomics (degradomics) and breast cancer metastasis. He is the pioneer of degradomics, with Nature Review Papers on this and protease genomics, drug target validation, MMP therapeutics, and substrate discovery. He has pioneered numerous approaches to decipher the protease and substrate degradomes by quantitative proteomics and N-terminome analysis in cell-based systems and in animal models.

Nicki has had an extensive and varied career in biochemical research in both Chemistry and Biological Sciences. She was part of the team that established the Australian Proteome Analysis Facility (APAF) at Macquarie University in 1996 which was at the forefront of the emergence of proteomics research. She left the University in 1999 to co-found Proteome Systems Limited, an Australian biotechnology company specialising in the development and application of proteomic and glycomic technology for diagnostics discovery, in which her group developed a platform of glycoanalytical technology and informatics tools. She now finds herself back at Macquarie University as a Professor and Director of the Centre of Biomolecular Frontiers, Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences. Her research interests now are in the structure and function of glycans, particularly in their role in cancer and microbial pathogenesis.

Nicki has published extensively on glycomics research, is a senior editor of Proteomics, on the Scientific Advisory Board of two biotechnology companies and the Advisory Committee of the Human Disease Glycomics/Proteomics Initiative (HGPI) of HUPO. She has also succeeded in producing 3 reasonably well-balanced children.

Akhilesh Pandey, M.D., Ph.D. is currently an Associate Professor at the Institute of Genetic Medicine and the Departments of Biological Chemistry, Oncology and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He obtained his medical degree from Armed Forces Medical College, Pune and completed his residency in Pathology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He obtained his Ph.D. in the laboratory of Vishva Dixit at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1995 and carried out his Postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Harvey Lodish at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1996-1999. He was a Visiting Scientist with Matthias Mann at the University of Southern Denmark from 1999-2002 before joining Johns Hopkins in 2002.

Dr. Pandey has received numerous prestigious awards including the Experimental Pathologist-In-Training Award by the American Society for Investigative Pathology, Howard Temin Award from the National Cancer Institute, Sidney Kimmel Scholar Award by the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research and the Beckman Young Investigator Award by Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. He has recently received the Era of Hope Scholar Award by the Department of Defense which is "intended for exceptionally talented, early-career scientists who have demonstrated that they are the best and the brightest in their field(s) through extraordinary creativity, vision, and productivity, and who have shown a strong potential for leadership in the breast cancer community as well as a vision for the eradication of breast cancer." He is a past Editorial Board member of Genome Research and currently serves as an Editorial Board member of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, Journal of Proteome Research, Proteomics, Clinical Proteomics and DNA Research and as an Associate Editor of BMC Bioinformatics. He is also the Founder and Director of the Institute of Bioinformatics, a non-profit research institute in Bangalore, India.

Associate Professor Anthony W Purcell is a senior research fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a laboratory head at the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include mass spectometry, proteomics and the biochemical definition of peptides recognised by the immune system, with a particular emphasis on the role of post-translationally modified antigens and their role in health and disease. Dr Purcell also leads a peptide based vaccine program that aims to design highly specific and stable peptide like lead compounds for inclusion in anti-tumor immunotherapies.

In 2008, Dr Purcell was awarded a NH&MRC Senior Research Fellowship and the Roche Medal from the Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He was the recipient of the Allan Stephens Ward from Arthritis Australia and a Grimwade Research Fellowship in 2005.

Mark Raftery obtained a PhD in organic chemistry and mass spectrometry from the University of Adelaide and has since focused on all aspects of biological mass spectrometry including chromatographic separations and analysis of proteins/peptides, and the analysis of small molecule by mass spectrometry. These efforts have lead to the completion of a number of successful projects and publications. His research interest range from high through-put mass spectrometry based proteomics to careful elucidation of novel post-translational modifications. He also facilitates access to sophisticated mass spectrometry instrumentation and techniques through his current position as Acting Director of the Bioanalytical mass spectrometry facility at University of New South Wales.

Prof. Pier Giorgio Righetti (Politecnico of Milano) studied chemistry at the University of Pavia and spent 4 years as a post doc. at MIT and Harvard Medical School. He is in the Editorial Board of Electrophoresis, J. Chromatography A, J of Proteomics, Proteomics, BioTechniques. He has developed methodologies in Biochemistry and Proteome analysis (isoelectric focusing in immobilized pH gradients, multicompartment electrolyzers with isoelectric membranes, membrane-trapped enzyme reactors, temperature-programmed capillary electrophoresis), and in chemistry of monomers and polymers (Immobilines and N-substituted polyacrylamides). He has developed a combinatorial ligand library of hexapeptides to search for low-abundance proteome and biomarkers in human urines, sera and cerebrospinal fluid. He has written “Proteomics Today” (Hamdan, M., Righetti, P.G., Wiley, Hoboken, 2005). He has won the CaSSS (California Separation Science Society) and the Cs. Horvath awards. On 540 articles reviewed by Scopus, Righetti scores 10.000 citations, with an average of 19 citations/article and with a H-index of 48.

Dr. Roessner has obtained her PhD in Biochemistry at the MPI for Molecular Plant Physiology in Germany, where she developed novel GC-MS methods to analyse metabolites in plants. Together with the application of sophisticated data mining the field of metabolomics was born and is today an important tool in biological sciences, systems biology and biomarker discovery. In 2003 she moved to Australia where she established a GC-MS and LC-MS based metabolomics platform as part of the ACPFG. Since 2007 Dr. Roessner has been involved in the setup of Metabolomics Australia (MA), an NCRIS 5.1 investment through Bioplatforms Australia Ltd and now leads the MA node at the School of Botany, The University of Melbourne.

Detlev graduated from the Univ of Konstanz (Germany) with a thesis on Immunoaffinity mass spectrometry in 1991. He spent a year with Prof. Fred McLafferty at Cornell (USA) working on gas phase protein structures and is now Dept Head for MALDI Applications R&D at Bruker Daltonics. His current research interests include developing biomarker discovery platforms enploying label and label-free quantitative proteomics and tissue imaging, and top-down protein sequencing.

Mathias is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science (IVA), the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (KVA), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and member of the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) Council and was chairman of the Swedish Biochemical and Molecular Biology Society (SFMB) from 1994 to 1999. Mathias has more than 300 publications in bioscience with the focus on the development and use of affinity reagents in biotechnology and biomedicine. Mathias cloned and characterized staphylococcal protein A and used it as an affinity tag for purification of proteins. In the late eighties, Mathias published use of magnetic microspheres with streptavidin for automated solid phase applications. Such laboratory systems based on streptavidin beads are at present frequently used both in research and diagnostics. In the 90:ies, his group described a new principle for affinity reagents (Affibodies). He also developed a new strategy for DNA analysis called pyrosequencing. At present, Mathias runs the Human Protein Atlas portal (www.proteinatlas.org) that contains more than 7 million high-resolution images representing 6,800 human proteins. He has founded several companies and received numerous awards.