Waters' Centers of Innovation Program Honors Ohio State University Laboratory

MILFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

At a ceremony at The Ohio State University, Waters Corporation WAT officially welcomed the University's Campus Chemical Instrument Center into the Waters Centers of Innovation Program. Headed by Prof. Vicki Wysocki, an Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the Center is widely renowned for fundamental research into ways of characterizing protein complexes, or assemblies of multiple individual proteins, that living organisms depend on for their survival. Ultimately, the research of the Wysocki Research Group could one day lead to new understanding of conditions, such as high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, pre-eclampsia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, among others.

"We are honored to join the Waters Centers of Innovation Program as a partner and applaud the state-of-the-art instrumentation and technical support that Waters has provided," said Caroline Whitacre, Vice President for Research at Ohio State. "Having access to the Waters technology has enabled the stellar work of Dr. Wysocki as she works to develop improved mass spectrometry approaches to determine structures of protein complexes. This research is helping researchers across the Ohio State campus and elsewhere to achieve breakthroughs and develop solutions that will have global impact."

Also on hand to congratulate Prof. Wysocki and her team was Eric Fotheringham, Director, Waters Centers of Innovation Program. "Vicki is an exemplary scientist and a highly-respected member of the worldwide mass spectrometry community. She is certainly deserving of this recognition and we are proud to have her participate in our program."

Abetting Wysocki in her research are advances in mass spectrometry technologies that allow her to probe the structures of protein complexes like never before.

"One of the important goals of our research is understanding how we might interrupt a disease or correct for a disease, or develop a drug target. Waters instruments are important to our research because of the ion mobility technology embedded in their quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometers. This technology allows us to measure not just a protein complex's mass/charge ratio but also their shape, and this is incredibly important if we are to understand their function or identify when unfolding has occurred, which can be a sign of damage caused by an adverse event," said Wysocki.

The driving force behind the technique of surface induced dissociation (SID) for mass spectrometry, Prof. Wysocki leads a research group exploring new ways of examining protein complexes by experimenting with SID on various instrument platforms. A mother, a teacher and a mentor, Prof. Wysocki is also an officer with the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS), currently serving as Vice-President for Programs. In 1992, Professor Wysocki received an ASMS Research Award, presented annually to young academic scientists to further her research in mass spectrometry, and in 2009 she received a Distinguished Contribution to Mass Spectrometry Award, the Society's highest achievement award. She is also one of 120 distinguished scientists, and one of six women, profiled in Elsevier's Encyclopedia of Mass Spectrometry (2015) for contributions to mass spectrometry over the last century.

In recognition of Prof. Wysocki, Waters is sponsoring a symposium on Tuesday, September 22 titled Mass Spectrometry in Structural Biology on the campus of The Ohio State University. Giving invited lectures at the Symposium are Prof. David Russell, Texas A&M Prof. Joseph Loo, UCLA; Prof. Evan Williams, UC Berkeley; Prof. Lisa Jones, IUPUI; Prof. Perdita Barran, University of Manchester (UK); Prof. David Clemmer, Indiana University; and Kevin Giles, Waters Corporation.

About The Ohio State University

The Ohio State University is a dynamic community of diverse resources, where opportunity thrives and where individuals transform themselves and the world. Founded in 1870, Ohio State is a world-class public research university and the leading comprehensive teaching and research institution in the state of Ohio. With more than 64,000 students (including 58,000 in Columbus), the Wexner Medical Center, 15 colleges, 80 centers and more than 200 majors, the university offers its students tremendous breadth and depth of opportunity in the liberal arts, the sciences and the professions.

About Waters Centers of Innovation Program

Waters Centers of Innovation Program recognizes and supports the efforts of scientists, facilitating breakthroughs in health and life science research, food safety and food science, environmental protection, sports medicine and many other areas. Waters provides scientists and their institutions in the Program with early access to pre-commercialized novel technology that may lead to scientific breakthroughs and jump-start a research project. In other instances, collaborative efforts between Waters expert applications scientists and Program participants have accelerated research in important ways.

In addition to Professor Wysocki, other researchers and research centers recognized by the Waters Centers of Innovation Program include: Professor Ganesh Anand, National University of Singapore; Professor Luiz Claudio Cameron, UniRio, Brazil; Professor David Clemmer, Indiana University; Professor Daniel Tsun-Yee Chiu, Chang Gung University; Dr. Joseph Dalluge, University of Minnesota; Dr. Petur Weihe Dalsgaard, University of Copenhagen; Professor Marcos Eberlin, University of Campinas, Brazil; Prof. Chris Elliott, Queen's University Belfast; Professor John Engen, Northeastern University; Professor Albert J. Fornace, Jr., Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center; Professor David Goodlett and Dr. Maureen Kane, University of Maryland; Professor De-an Guo, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica; Dr. Frank Gonzalez, National Cancer Institute; Dr. Carlo R. Largiadèr, Dr. Jean-Francois DuFour and Dr. Martin Fiedler, Inselspital University Hospital; Professor Julie Leary, University of California – Davis; Professor Amit Kumar Mandal, St. John's Research Institute, Bangalore, India; Professor John McLean, Vanderbilt University; Professor Arthur Moseley, Duke University; Professor Jeremy Nicholson, Imperial College London; Dr. Devin Peterson, University of Minnesota; Assistant Professor Jessica Prenni, Colorado State University; Dr. Serge Rezzi, Nestle Institute of Health Sciences; Dr. Ryan Rodgers, Future Fuels Institute, Florida State University; Professor Pauline Rudd, National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training; Professor James Scrivens, University of Warwick; Professor Vladimir Shulaev, University of North Texas; Dr. Norman Smith, Kings College London; Professor Sarah Trimpin, Wayne State University; Professor Bert van Bavel, Örebro University; Caroline West and Eric Lesselier, University of Orleans, Orleans, France;.

About Waters Corporation (www.waters.com)

For more than 50 years, Waters Corporation WAT has created business advantages for laboratory-dependent organizations by delivering practical and sustainable innovation to enable significant advancements in such areas as healthcare delivery, environmental management, food safety, water quality, consumer products, and high value-added chemicals worldwide.

Pioneering a connected portfolio of separations science, laboratory information management, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis, Waters technology breakthroughs and laboratory solutions provide an enduring platform for customer success.

With revenue of $1.99 billion in 2014, Waters is driving scientific discovery and operational excellence for customers worldwide.

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