Oliver Fiehn, a professor of biochemistry and Director of the NIH West Coast Metabolomics Center, was recently interviewd by theanalyticalscientist.com in a feature titled ‘Opening Doors With Omics’. When asked about his inital interest in metabolomics, he had this to say:
On my first day, my boss said, “Don’t ignore the small peaks.” Abundance doesn’t equate to importance; compounds at very low concentrations, such as hormones, can have huge effects – as can high abundance compounds like glucose. That’s the concept of metabolomics – looking at the whole picture, trying to understand what it means and unraveling biological technologies along the way. It is asking an open-ended question, which always leads to new discoveries and opens doors. And it is simply a lot of fun!
Fiehn was also listed at #9 and #8 on their ‘Mentors’ and ‘Omics Explorers’ Top Ten lists, respectively.
