In Conversation with the EAS Award Winner for Outstanding Achievements in Mass Spectrometry

At the 2024 Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS), held from November 18–20 in Plainsboro, NJ, leading scientists were celebrated for their contributions to the analytical sciences. Among the honorees was Benjamin Garcia of Washington University in St. Louis, who received the prestigious EAS Award for Outstanding Achievements in Mass Spectrometry.

Benjamin Garcia received his Bachelors in Science (B.S.) in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis in 2000. There he was an American Chemical Society (ACS) Scholar and was awarded the I.M. Kolthoff Enrichment award by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. In 2008, Garcia was appointed as an Assistant Professor at Princeton University until his recruitment as the Presidential Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Faculty Director of the Quantitative Proteomics Resource Core at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 2012. He was promoted to full Professor in 2016, and named the John McCrea Dickson MD Presidential Professor in 2018. Ben became the Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in the summer of 2021. He is highly passionate about encouraging and supporting diversity and younger underrepresented minority scientists (1).

In this interview, Garcia answers the following questions:

• Congratulations on your EAS award for Outstanding Achievement in Mass Spectrometry! Can you tell us a little bit about what this recognition means to you?
• Can you please give us a brief overview of your research group’s work developing and applying novel proteomic approaches and bioinformatics for interrogating protein modifications?
• Why is mass spectrometry an effective technique for this application area? What benefits does it offer the analyst?
• Are there any new or interesting applications for mass spectrometry that you will be exploring that you’d like to highlight for our readers?
• As the year ends, what emerging trends do you expect to shape the field of mass spectrometry in 2025 and beyond?
• What advice would you offer to early-career scientists beginning their journey in analytical chemistry?

To learn more about EAS 2024, you can look at our news coverage, which includes the EAS 2024 awards ceremony and an interview with Rachel Martin, another EAS 2024 Award winner.

Reference

(1) About the PI. Garcia Lab 2024. https://www.bengarcialab.com/about-the-pi/ (accessed 2025-11-26)