About Ben Orsburn

The author of this blog has been applying mass spectrometry to riddles in biology for ...a while... First with clinical chemistry, then a PhD centered on glycopeptides before moving into the much less stressful worlds of messenger RNA, proteins and metabolites. 

If you need help with any of these things, feel free to reach out to me directly: LCMSmethods@gmail.com. I'm one of those weird PIs who will do absolutely anything to make sure I'm still in the lab poorly pipetting and messing up my instruments.

When I'm not flooding the internet with unfiltered opinions on the coolest proteomics stuff - I'm an Assistant Professor at the brand new Organ Pathobiology and Therapeutics Institute (OPTIn) at the University of Pittsburgh! I have some other titles and affiliations, but that's already a lot to type. My team's sole focus is to use ultra-low input and single cell proteomics to tackle medical riddles that haven't been solved by other approaches. My team is just coming together in the summer of 2025 and we're getting a feel for the number of collaborations we can handle. Got a great idea? Please reach out! 

Google Scholar has some more examples of what I and my teams do. 

I also do stuff outside of proteomics - a side project I've been working on for years finally got to a good publishing point. If you want to feel like protein PTMs are a nice break, you should take a foray into the world of pesticide residue analysis. I didn't buy bulk aliquots of hundreds of different pesticides and develop methods to keep them to myself. More complete LCMS methods coming soon! 

I was previously the chair of the US HUPO Virtual Media Outreach Group (now Educations and Outreach - which is a better name) and I'm still an active member. Being part of this team is one of the coolest things I've done in my career. Our goal is to make cutting edge proteomics technology more approachable. More information on US HUPO and VMO can be found here: https://www.ushupo.org/Committees

Thanks to VMO and US HUPO we got our first support (and guests) for Dr. Benjamin Neely and my other big time consuming outreach project -  THE Proteomics Show Podcast series. While I was cleaning up this bio I looked and we're in Season 7 of the show with 85 episodes recorded? For some reason people keep listening so we'll keep doing it. 

I am also the sole person responsible for selecting the official mascot for the US HUPO and HUPO organizations. It was the least I could do for organizations that have meant the absolute world to me the last several years. 

This blog is a symptom of an obsession with the power of mass spectrometry and the belief that these technologies, when used to their potential, will make the world a better place.

Some other useful links: 

www.LCMSmethods.org

ABRF Workflow Interest Network Panel. Honestly, I should probably take this down, but we had a great run as a team. 

The Orsburn Lab Github. This isn't just the code that we've made, it's also other people's code that I use and you should too.

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:  LCMS methods@gmail.com (remove the space)

Fair warning, though: If I appear enthusiastic about this stuff in these blog posts, you haven't seen me wound up in person. I love this stuff. 

You can also find me on BlueSky - and I try to help answer questions on r/proteomics. I'm probably not one of the moderators. I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to tell you if I am because of some Reddit rules.