Outreach, education and training activities are important in our lab. The cumulative outcome of these outreach efforts are more competitive high school students, undergraduates, postdoctoral fellows, staff, and faculty that are better prepared for academic and commercial research. The majority of these efforts as shown below are currently active and will continue into the future.
Sumner Lab Open House
[Introduction w/photos]
Metabolomics Training Workshop
The Sumner lab and MU Metabolomics Center have established a series of one week metabolomics workshops. The popularity of these workshops has grown over time, and we often couple these workshops to mini symposiums. For example, the workshop curriculum generally includes an introductory, but substantial lecture on mass spectrometry and metabolite profiling to kickoff the event on Monday morning. The workshops then jumps immediately into detailed hands‐on training related to GC/MS and LC/MS metabolite profiling. This includes experimental statistical design, lyophilization, metabolite extraction, metabolite derivatization, instrumentation overviews, instrumental parameters, methods rationale/justification, and data acquisition. Participants have the option to bring a limited number of their own real world samples and to collect real time metabolic profiles. Once data has been acquired it is used for data processing instruction which includes spectral and chromatographic deconvolution, metabolite identifications, metabolite library construction and use, high‐throughput quantitative and qualitative data extraction, statistical processing, and data interpretation. The hands on sessions (Mon‐Thur) are often topped with a metabolomics symposium on Friday to re‐emphasize what was learned during the week and to hear more about practical applications of metabolomics in addressing modern biological questions. Workshop participants leave with enabling information and tools to continue metabolomics studies independently or collaboratively with our group. Our workshops are offered twice per year and limited to 20 participants each.
National, Regional, and International Meetings
[Introduction w/photos]