Brandon Ruotolo Wins the 2023 Biemann Medal

Brandon Ruotolo, University of Michigan

Brandon Ruotolo, a professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan, has been named the 2023 recipient of the ASMS Biemann Medal. He will receive the medal at the 2023 ASMS Conference in Houston, Texas, which takes place June 4–8.

The Biemann Medal recognizes significant achievements in basic or applied mass spectrometry in the early stages of an academic career. In addition to the medal, each recipient is invited to speak as part of an award lecture and given a $5000 cash award.

Ruotolo has made significant contributions to the development and application of novel high performance mass spectrometry (MS) technologies for the broader part of his career, with a focus on applications of high impact to the biology and medical communities. Examples of his career achievements include leadership in the development of ion mobility MS (IM-MS) for structural characterization of biopolymers; refinement of collision induced unfolding (CIU) methods that enable determination of the number of autonomously folded domains within proteins and characterization of stability reflective of changes in both local and global protein structure; the use of CIU to prob the relative stability of protein-ligand interactions; the development of chemical cross-linkers to stabilize protein structure in the absence of bulk solvent; integration of IM-MS and other structural MS methods as a high-throughput approach for structural proteomics; and the application of IM-MS as a screening tool for therapeutic drug discovery.