Scientists Honored for Important Research on Mass Spectrometry

William Gilliland Jr. and Nalaka Rannulu recently received the Best Poster Awards at the 2015 CASSS Mass Spec Symposium.

Gilliland won with a poster on “Microchip Capillary Eletrophoresis Coupled With High Pressure Mass Spectrometry for the Analysis of Amino Acids and Other Metabolites.” He is a research assistant at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

“This work focused on the application of this novel combination of technologies to measure analytes in cell growth media with high resolution and specificity with minimal sample preparation time,” according to poster judge James Carroll, of Pfizer, Inc.
Rannulu’s winning entry was on “Characterization of Asparagine 330 Deamidation in the Conserved Fc Region of IgG1.” He is with Janssen R&D.

Judge Jason Rouse, also with Pfizer, Inc., characterized Rannulu’s poster as a “well-done, impactful poster presentation with clear, concise messages and compelling data on an important and timely product characterization topic involving a hard-to-detect antibody chemical modification.”

The Mass Spec Poster Awards recognize two individuals each year who exhibit and present high quality posters with original and impactful biotherapeutics or vaccines mass spectrometry work. The awards were announced at the 2015 CASSS Mass Spec Symposium, held in Brooklyn, New York, Sept. 22-25.

The criteria for the Poster Award are as follows:

  • Originality and importance of the work
  • Scientific creativity and problem solving skills demonstrated
  • Impact of the work to the biotherapeutics or vaccines fields
  • Technical quality of the poster (written portion)
  • Presentation quality of the poster content (verbal portion)

The focus of the Mass Spec Symposium is the application of mass spectrometry for product characterization, process monitoring, formulation development, and release testing in the pharmaceutical industry. The Symposium covers case studies and workshops (industrial, vendor, and regulatory) devoted to practical concerns in the use of MS within the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

More information on the Mass Spec Symposium, click on the Meetings menu item.