Keynote Speakers
Professor Dr. Robert D Hall gained a PhD in plant biotechnology and enzymology (Edinburgh, 1984) and has subsequently completed ca 35 years research experience, including 25 years in project / group management. He moved to The Netherlands in 1987 where he currently works at Wageningen Plant Research as Deputy Business Unit Manager Bioscience (www.pri.wur.nl/uk/). He also holds a Special Professorship in Plant Metabolomics at Wageningen University. He is co-founder of the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre (www.metabolomicscentre.nl) and is currently Chair of the Supervisory Board. He (co)organised the first ever international metabolomics conference in Wageningen in 2002 and the international Metabolomics Society conferences in Amsterdam (2010) and The Hague (2019). He was on the Board of the international Metabolomics Society from 2008-2014 and was its elected President (2010-2012). He was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Fellowship of the Society in 2015. In 2018, he was awarded the Nils Foss Prize for Excellence in Food Science. He is scientific advisor / member of a number of (inter)national research committees coordinating research strategy and funding both in Europe and N. America. His primary research activities are now centred on developing metabolomics technologies for application in plants for both science and industry (www.metabolomics.nl). He is on the Editorial Boards of Frontiers in Metabolomics, and the journal Metabolomics. He has completed over 200 publications of which ca. 75% are in peer-reviewed journals and he has edited 3 books including 2 on Plant metabolomics.
Dr. Zhentian Li obtained his PhD in Chemistry with over 17 years of experience in MS-based metabolomics. He is the Assistant Director of the University of Missouri Metabolomics Center (2016-Present) (https://biochem.missouri.edu/faculty/faculty-members/leiz/index.php). He is involved in the development of UPLC-MS, GC-MS and UPLC-MS-SPE (Solid Phase Extraction)-NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) platform for metabolic profiling of complex samples, and metabolomics data processing software and mass spectral library for data processing and compound identification. He has been involved in various large-scale metabolomics projects in biological, medical and veterinary science domains. He is specifically interested in the technology development of MS-based metabolomics and its application in biological research. He serves as a Member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (2003-Present), Metabolomics Association of North America (2018-Present), American Chemical Society (1998-2002) and Phytochemical Society of North America (2017). He is on the Editorial boards Molecules, the Analytical Chemistry section (2019). He served as a chair for the Symposium on “Industrial Phytochemistry”, University of Missouri, Columbia (2017). He has more than 60 publications in peer-reviewed journals of international repute