Dr. Warwick Dunn is a Lecturer in Metabolomics at the University of Birmingham. He has applied metabolomics strategies to study microbial, plant and mammalian systems with a focus on (1) development and validation of analytical and computational workflows and tools for non-targeted metabolomics studies and (2) applying metabolomics and systems biology strategies to study human ageing, health and disease. Warwick has a passion for robust metabolite annotation and identification and its reporting. He is a Director of the Metabolomics Society and chair for the Metabolite Identification task group of this society.

Dr Dejan Nikolic is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago. He is currently in charge of daily operations of the Analytical Core of the UIC/NIH Center for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research. In his research he uses modern LC-MS and LC-MS-MS approaches to address challenging problems in phytochemical research. His interests include structure elucidation of natural products using mass spectrometry, determination of ADME properties of active plant ingredients as well as development of new assays for drug discovery from plant sources. He is also interested in the development and validation of modern UHPLC MS-MS methods for quantitative analysis of active ingredients both in plant extracts and in clinical specimens in support of Phase I and Phase II clinical trials. He has authored and co-authored more than 80 publications and two book chapters.

Prof. Lloyd Sumner is Professor of Analytical Biochemistry and the Director of the Analytical Core Facility in the Plant Biology Division at The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. His research group focuses on the development, advancement, and application of leading-edge instrumental techniques for the large-scale profiling and identification of the functional products of gene expression in plants, namely proteins and metabolites. Lloyd has a passion for robust metabolite annotation and identification and its reporting, has been President and Treasurer of the Metabolomics Society and is a member of the Metabolite Identification task group of this society.

Mr Martin Jones is a NERC-sponsored PhD student within the Environmental Metabolomics Research Laboratory at the University of Birmingham, UK. Supervised jointly by Prof. Mark Viant and Dr. Warwick Dunn, Martin’s research focuses upon the development of new analytical methodologies and workflows for the annotation and identification of metabolites extracted from the freshwater model organism, Daphnia magna. Martin will provide support to the CASMI organisers throughout the competition in the form of website content management.

Website support is provided by Emma Schymanski (Eawag, Switzerland) and Steffen Neumann (IPB, Germany) from the CASMI 2012 team. As they do not have insider access to the solutions, they will most likely submit solutions this year as regular participants. The contest is also supported by the Metabolite Identification task group of the Metabolomics Society, the American Society of Mass Spectrometry and the Mass Spectrometry, Metabolomics & Proteomics Facility of the University of Illinois at Chicago.