Why University of Wisconsin and the Coon lab?

I chose UW-Madison because they have excellent research across all branches of chemistry and life sciences. Similarly, I chose to join the Coon group because I felt that the questions they were asking were important and would allow me to work collaboratively with many other researchers on campus. I saw the Coon lab as a place where I could pursue my interest in analytical chemistry instrumentation and method development while concurrently working on problems with direct biomedical impact.

 What was the focus of your work?

I investigated the utility of alternative reagent cations for negative electron-transfer dissociation (NETD). This could help facilitate NETD as a technique for the high throughput structural characterization of acid peptides, glycopeptides, and carbohydrates, which are currently challenging the traditional mass spectrometry-based approaches.

Also, I developed new methods for large-scale untargeted metabolomics using high-resolution gas-chromatography mass spectrometry. We applied this technique to investigate the metabolomes of yeast, mouse, and recently human plasma. For my last project we analyzed plasma from patients who have a family history of Alzheimer’s disease in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. I hope to identify a metabolic signature that can help detect early Alzheimer’s progression before the primary symptoms begin.