HUPO Awards - 2025 recipients

The Distinguished Service Award recognizes an exemplary member of the proteomic research community whose dedicated service has made indispensable contributions to the organization and mission of HUPO. Note: This award is presented biannually (2025, 2027, 2029, etc)

Mathieu Lavallée-Adam,University of Ottawa, Canada and Ruth Huettenhain, Stanford Medicine, USA

Their efforts have resulted in building a dynamic ECR Community. The ECR group has grown into a supportive and active network through their leadership, providing early career scientists with invaluable mentorship, collaboration, and professional development opportunities. Furthermore, Ruth and Mathieu have designed and implemented a diverse array of activities, including workshops, networking events, and career development sessions, which have empowered ECRs to actively participate in HUPO’s scientific and organizational life. Their work has enabled HUPO to seamlessly integrate early career researchers into all levels of the organization, ensuring that fresh perspectives and new ideas are continuously infused into HUPO’s activities. By fostering international collaboration and inclusivity, they have ensured that the ECR initiative reaches andbenefits young researchers worldwide, reflecting HUPO’s commitment to global scientific excellence. Their outstanding service exemplifies the spirit of HUPO and inspires us all to invest in the future of our scientific community

DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT IN PROTEOMIC SCIENCES AWARD

The Distinguished Achievement in Proteomic Sciences Award recognizes a scientist for distinguished scientific achievements in the field of proteomic science.

Yu-Ju Chen,Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Dr. Yu-Ju Chen is a trailblazer in proteomics whose transformative innovations have reshaped both
biological discovery and clinical translation. She brings novel chemistry (functional nanomaterial and microfluidics) into proteomics to pioneer ultra-sensitive mass spectrometry for membrane proteome and PTMomics, enabling nanoscale-to-single-cell proteomic analysis, such as the first single-cell phosphoproteomics landscape that offers critical insights into cancer heterogeneity and treatment resistance. Dr. Chen also invented nanoprobe-based affinity mass spectrometry, leading to the discovery of serum protein variant barcodes as novel biomarkers for non-invasive early cancer detection. Most notably, she founded Taiwan Cancer Moonshot Program and led the first proteogenomic study of non-smoking lung cancer, identifying distinct pathogenesis mechanisms and a high-risk “late-like” subtype, now informing treatment decisions (Cell, Cancer Cell). Her team also constructed "Taiwan Cancer Multi-Omics Precision Medicine Knowledgebase" as a publicly accessible resource. Her pioneering technologies and discoveries have reshaped global understanding of cancer biology and accelerated precision medicine. 

The Discovery in Proteomic Sciences Award recognizes a scientist for a single discovery in the field of proteomics.

Bernd Wollscheid, ETH Zürich, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Insitute of Translational Medicine, Switzerland

Dr. Wollscheid is an internationally recognized leader in cell surface-directed chemoproteomics.
His lab has developed technologies that enable quantitative mapping of the cellular surfaceome, aimed at understanding how molecular nanoscale organization at the cell surface influences cellular signaling and biological function. This includes technologies such as Cell Surface Capture that enables quantitative elaboration of the surfaceome; TRICEPS and HATRIC for the direct identification of ligand-receptor interactions. Recently, LUX-MS an optoproteomic technology to discover surfaceome receptor nanoscale organization was developed. Dr. Wollscheid’s chemoproteomics toolbox has been implemented in academic and the biotech sector with important discoveries that span both basic biology and translational oncology. He has a specific interest in translating technologies and enabling academia and industry to leverage these advancements for new discoveries. Most recently, Dr. Wollscheid founded DISCO Pharmaceuticals, with the goal of developing therapeutic antibodies recognizing cell surface protein communities. 

CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL PROTEOMICS AWARD

The Clinical and Translational Proteomics Award recognizes a scientist in the field of clinical and translational proteomics.

Junmin Peng, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, USA

Dr. Junmin Peng is a recognized leader in mass spectrometry-based proteomics, with a longstanding focus on Alzheimer’s disease (AD). He performed the first spatial proteomics analysis of AD plaques (JBC 2004) and pioneered deep proteomic profiling of AD brain (14,513 proteins), CSF (5,940), and blood (4,826) (Clin Proteomics 2019; Neuron 2020), now extended to over 2,100 human samples (under review in Cell). His work spans the whole proteome, aggregated proteome, PTMs, and protein turnover (Cell 2025). These studies uncovered 17 altered pathways, identified CSF/blood biomarkers (Mol Neurodegener 2020), and proposed novel therapeutic strategies. Dr. Peng has published 260 peer-reviewed papers (h-index >100, 41,000 citations). He has trained over 100 scientists, including 15 who became faculty members (e.g., Dr. Nick Seyfried, Emory; Dr. Chan-hyun Na, Johns Hopkins). His work has shaped our understanding of AD pathogenesis and contributed significantly to the advancement of proteomics and AD precision medicine.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AWARD

Recognizes an individual or a team in private industry for the commercialization or (not necessarily) the invention of products, technologies or procedures which had the demonstrated effect in enabling proteome researchers to advance their science.

Sponsored By:  HUPO Industrial Advisory Board (IAB)

Joel Braunstein and team at C2N Diagnostics

 According to the World Health Organization,~55M people live with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or other dementias, with 10M new cases annually. Millions more are at risk due to genetics, environment, comorbidities, and age. This creates a need for scalable, affordable, and accurate blood tests for diagnosis, risk assessment, and treatment monitoring, especially in presymptomatic stages. C2N Diagnostics, a spin-out from Bateman and Holtzman labs at Washington University School of Medicine, has stablished a high-performance blood biomarkers test to aid in the early diagnosis of AD. They introduced the PrecivityAD® test, the first analytically and clinically validated blood biomarker test and the PrecivityAD2™ test in 2023, for use in clinical care within the United States. which combines Aβ42/40 and %p-tau217 for superior diagnostic performance. In 2024, they launched a method to measure Tau-MTBR, aiding in staging amyloid and tau pathology. Their markers are widely used in clinical research, with the PrecivityAD2.

RISING STAR AWARD 

This career achievement award is designed to recognize early career researchers who have had an exceptional impact on the proteomics field and community. This impact can take the shape of publications, patents obtained, development of a commercial product, establishment of a course, training program, workshop or any other contributions or service to the field of proteomics. 

Organized By: HUPO Early Career Researcher (ECR) Committee

Michael Skinnider, Princeton University, USA

Michael’s doctoral work in the laboratory significantly advanced the field of interaction proteomics, through his work on co-fractionation mass spectrometry (CF-MS). Perhaps most notably, he spearheaded the first in vivo maps of the mammalian protein interaction network within living tissues (Cell 2021). Separately, he re-analyzed essentially every CF-MS experiment that had ever been done (>21,000 proteomic runs) to establish both experimental and computational best practices for CF-MS (Nature Methods 2021), and assemble the highest-quality map of the human protein interaction network in existence (Nature Communications 2023). This is in addition to his contributions in mapping context-specific rewiring of the human interactome in response to inflammatory stimuli (Genome Biology 2020) and in developing software for proteomic analysis (Bioinformatics 2021, PLoS Computational Biology 2018).
Before even starting his PhD thesis, Michael had already made major contributions to computational mass spectrometry as an undergraduate student. He developed a metabolomic software platform to automate the discovery of new antibiotics from nature, which led to the discovery of an antibiotic with a novel mechanism of action (Nature Chemical Biology 2016) and multiple first-author papers. This software was patented and is now being licensed to a spinoff company, Adapsyn Biosciences, that recently completed a >$100m financing round led by Pfizer. More recently, Michael has made major contributions to AI for small molecule mass spectrometry. These include the development of a chemical AI approach to discover emerging drugs of abuse in complex patient samples that was published in Nature Machine Intelligence (2021), sparked a collaboration with the US DEA, and is now part of the routine clinical workflows within the British Columbia CDC.