An Interview with Michael Shortreed

Every year at the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) conference, various awards are given out to honor veteran and newcomer researchers making notable impacts in the field of mass spectrometry (MS). One such award is the Al Yergey MS Scientist Award. Named in honor of Al Yergey, who served 45 years at the National Institutes of Health and was known as a dedicated mentor, this award recognizes dedication and significant contributions to MS-based science by “unsung heroes” (1). This year, one of the award winners was Michael Shortreed of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Shortreed is a senior scientist in the Department of Chemistry of the University of Wisconsin–Madison (2). His work is said to have significantly advanced the field of proteomics, most notably through developing computational methods, which have been implemented into widely used open-software tools. These tools, better known as MetaMorpheus (consisting of FlashLFQ, O-Pair, and others), are used in hundreds of laboratories around the world. According to ASMS, the software package has enabled novel biological applications and transformative data analysis strategies in proteomics. With more than 80 publications under his name, Shortreed continues to lead innovative research efforts as a forward-thinking scientist.

Recently, we sat down with Shortreed to learn about his storied career and how he got to where he is now. In this first portion of our interview, we discuss his feelings on winning the Al Yergey MS Scientist Award. Moreover, we also learn about his research on computational methods, which led to his work being used across various scientific communities.

Please stay tuned for more from our time with Shortreed and another Al Yergey MS Scientist Award winner, Vilmos Kertesz!

References

(1) Al Yergey MS Scientist Award. American Society for Mass Spectrometry 2025. (accessed 2025-4-25)

(2) Michael Shortreed. University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Chemistry 2025. (accessed 2025-4-25)

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