This year's Michael S. Bereman Award for Innovative Clinical Proteomics, sponsored by Agilent, was won by Dr. Mari DeMarco, a Clinical Chemist, at St. Paul's Hospital, Providence Health Care, Research Director, Providence Research, Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, University of British Columbia, Investigator, and Center for Heart & Lung Innovation, University of British Columbia. The award was presented to Dr. DeMarco in recognition of her exemplary and cumulative work in this field. 

As part of the honor, Dr. DeMarco was invited to give a plenary lecture at the recent Mass Spectrometry & Advances in the Clinical Lab (MSACL) conference in Monterey, California. Her talk, “Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Taking a Step Back to Move Proteomics Forward in the Clinical Lab”, looked at how re-evaluating the status quo in clinical proteomics helped to take science leaps forward and implement protein mass spectrometry to improve patient care.

The MSACL Open Educational Grant program provides awards to early and mid-career community members to fund conference and short course attendance.

About MSACL

MSACL is committed to the advancement of mass spectrometry and other advanced technologies, including data science, in the clinical laboratory through education and training of practitioners, physicians, laboratory scientists, industrial scientists, and health care professionals involved in patient care and management. MSACL supports the development of new technologies to be used in laboratory medicine; including diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of clinical disorders.

The association's mission is to further the accumulation and sharing of expertise in the area of mass spectrometry and advanced technologies for use in the clinical laboratory with the goal of improving patient care. As part of this mission the association hosts MSACL conferences in the US and Europe, as well as supporting educational activities in Asia. MSACL also supports and manages the society's Journal of Mass Spectrometry & Advances in the Clinical Lab.

About Michael S. Bereman

Michael Bereman passed on March 17, 2021. Following a diagnosis of ALS in 2015 he was racing against time for the next 6 years to understand the cause of sporadic ALS and identify diagnostic and prognostic markers; more time than is generally expected - likely due to an unbridled positive attitude and deep support network of family, friends and colleagues. Learn more about Michael's Story here.  Learn more about the award here.