Award for a Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry

A major event taking place at ASMS today is the award presentation for a Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry, which will be given to Dr. Marvin L. Vestal, founder, CEO, and CSO of Virgin Instruments, in Hall 4 from 4:45–5:30 PM. The award recognizes a focused, singular achievement in or contribution to fundamental or applied mass spectrometry.

Dr. Vestal's development of the practical MALDI-TOF and TOF-TOF mass spectrometers resulted in the first commercial MALDI-TOF instrument — the Voyagers series. More than half of MALDI-TOF instruments in use today are based on Dr. Vestal’s designs. A significant accomplishment of his work was the development of a comprehensive theoretical model for the various components of a TOF analyzer with a view toward optimizing performance of a complete system for particular applications. Dr. Vestal implemented this theoretical approach to design a family of MALDI-TOF instruments that employed delayed extraction and, through further refinements, the construction of a tandem time-of-flight instrument introduced commercially as the 4700 Proteome Analyzer and later the 4800 TOF-TOF by Applied Biosystems.

Advances in related technology have been combined with Dr. Vestal’s theoretical predictions to provide MALDI-TOF MS and MS-MS systems that out-perform earlier instruments by orders of magnitude. The MALDI-TOF MS and MS-MS systems designed by Dr. Vestal have had and are continuing to have an enormously positive impact on many important areas of research, including proteomics, glycomics, cell signaling, structural biology, tissue imaging, and polymer science.

The staff of LCGC and Spectroscopy would like to congratulate Dr. Vestal on his incredible accomplishment and contribution to the mass spectrometry field.