About Ben Orsburn

I received my Ph.D. in Biology from Virginia Tech, mostly by doing MS-based small molecule elucidation and quantification, with a little bit of proteomics and targeted metabolomics.  Afterward I did 2 short post-docs, at JHU and NCI, before taking a Staff Scientist position at the NIAID.  I did a bunch of weird stuff for a while -- including just flying out to hang out it in all sorts of mass spec labs all over the world -- before finding my way back to about where I started.

My postdoc work dealt with investigating the mechanism of action of chemotherapeutics slated for clinical trials via genomics and proteomics.  Since this would leave very few opportunities to publish, I started this blog in order to stay current and attempt to stay relevant in some way to the field.  It still hasn't seemed like a bad idea, so I've never stopped.

This blog is a symptom of an obsession with the power of mass spectrometry and the belief that these technologies, in the right hands, will make the world a better place.

In April of 2018, www.LCMSmethods.Org came online. With the amazing team of Editors and Contributors on this project, we are working to help standardize all methods in mass spectrometry and to lower the boundary between biology and getting good mass spectrometry data. Optimization takes a lot of time in a new application. If you can just go and get an instrument method already optimized by an expert -- your uptime increases and so does the quality of your data.  Stay tuned. I couldn't be more proud to be the lead on this project and team and our first real methods release is shaping up to be something incredible.

In May of 2018, I was elected to the ABRF Workflow Interest Network Panel. The mission of WIN is to help scientists and resource facilities improve reproducibility of scientific data by optimizing analytical parameters and providing recommendations for reproducible inter-laboratory workflows. With a mission this big, it's going to be a lot of work. If you'd like to contribute definitely reach out to the Panel or to me -- we've got big plans for what mass spectrometry can be -- and with your help we can do it!

In the chaos of 2020, I joined the amazing faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. I'm currently junior faculty with Namandje Bumpus, doing mass spectrometry research for a living in my favorite city in the world. 

Someone reminded me recently that my Github might be a useful thing to link here. You'll find forks to lots of the cool stuff I use and talk about here.

If you'd like to reach me, the best way is to place a comment on the blog post of interest, or send me a direct email:  orsburn@vt.edu

Fair warning, though: I really am this enthusiastic about this field all the time.