Since 2012, a New Investigator Award has been given annually to honor excellence among bioanalytical scientists within their first five years in the industry. In this regard, Daniel Wilffert, a 2016 award nominee from QPS Netherlands, is truly fresh off the starting blocks. He started @QPS Holdings LLC last August and only just defended his thesis this past February at the University of Groningen.
Daniel’s PhD work, which he is essentially continuing at QPS, involved the development of highly sensitive liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) assays for protein quantification in biological matrices without the use of antibodies. This is desirable because antibodies can be time-consuming and costly to produce and it is sometimes difficult to maintain the same quality from batch to batch, leading to problems with reproducibility and inter-laboratory comparability. Wilffert’s PhD thesis “Antibody-free LC-MS/MS protein analysis of TRAIL” showed that antibody-free LC-MS/MS approaches start to reach detection at the same concentration range as immunoassays.
Wilffert is one of 25 new investigators nominated from five continents (the award was originally known as the Young Investigator Award but someone must have noticed the late bloomers among us). In the coming weeks, five finalists will be selected and announced on Bioanalysis Zone, the online presence of Bioanalysis.
Ultimately, a single winner will receive:
- US$1,000
- A trip to the European Bioanalysis Forum in Barcelona to present their work
- A featured profile and their own webinar on Bioanalysis Zone
- 1-year subscription to Bioanalysis
- Complementary open access publication of their next accepted paper
This year’s award is jointly sponsored by @BioanalysisZone and the Waters Corporation. The judges are: Erin Chambers, Principal Scientist @WatersCorp; Neil Spooner @SpoonerBio, Senior Editor of Bioanalysis; @Michael_Hodsdon, Medical Fellow at Eli Lilly; and last year’s winner Xiwei (Emmi) Zheng. Check out the interview with Zheng here.)
“I especially enjoy the puzzle aspect of what I do,” says Wilffert, “and the contribution I can make, helping new drugs reach the market.” One thing’s for sure – QPS is super proud!
