Lightning Talk Awards

ABRF Lightning Talk Awards

Sponsored by Waters Corporation

Waters Corporation sponsors prizes for the best lightning talks presented at the ABRF Annual Meeting that contains original research. The ABRF Education Committee reviews all talk abstracts submitted to the meeting and selects a limited number of candidates for award consideration. Lead authors of the candidate talks are invited to give a short (3-minute) presentation of their work during a concurrent session at the ABRF Annual Meeting.  The authors of the lightning talks were judged to be the best receive the Waters Corporation sponsored Awards during the ABRF Awards Program. To be eligible for the competition, the talk's first author should submit a draft of their talk before the annual meeting and be available for the judging and the Award Session during the meeting.  Each of the winners receives $500, along with complimentary ABRF membership for one year, and a reduced registration fee for the ABRF Annual Meeting.

Eligible talks focus on the latest scientific research results enabled by advanced life sciences technologies, methods and software tools that facilitate applications, and the latest technological developments in the biotechnology field.

ABRF Lightning Talk Categories

  • Animal Research in Core Facilities
  • Flow Cytometry/Trending: Flow Cytometry, Antibodies, Statistics, Bio-IT, Bioinformatics, 3D Printing, All Other
  • Genomics: Single cell, Metagenomics, Sequencing, Gene Editing, CRISPR/CAS, Biomarkers, Microarray, Software, etc.
  • Imaging: Confocal, Light Microscopy, Small Animal Imaging, Electron Microscopy, Developing Applications, etc.
  • Novel Technologies: New and emerging applications and approaches used in Core facilities
  • Proteomics/Mass Spectrometry: Protein analysis, Protein Sequencing, Metabolomics, Lipidomics, Glycomics, Carbohydrate analysis, Biomarkers, Software, etc.

Submission Criteria

Lightning talks should be aimed at promoting scientific discovery or enriching the core or laboratory setting. Talks should provide data or measurements that support the conclusions. Any abstract focused on marketing a core facility or company (e.g. presenting an inventory of services or equipment) will not be accepted.

Recommended topics include:

  • Development of a novel technique or modification to a previously implemented protocol
  • Implementation details of a new workflow, protocol or standard operating procedure
  • A quantitative evaluation of the impact of Cores on the institutions they serve

A well written and correctly formatted example of a Core Facilities abstract presented by Johnson et al in:

J Biomol Tech v.24(2); Jul 2013 (doi:  10.7171/jbt.13-2402-003) can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3605922/

Prior Award Winners

2025

Patricia Basta - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Method comparison for RNA extraction to be used for potential differential
expression analysis of salamanders undergoing winter dormancy

James Cox – University of Utah
Comparative Study of Lipidomic Profiles in Fed versus Fasted States
and Across Blood Collection Tube Matrices: Implications for Medium to Large-Scale Epidemiological Studies

Brennan Grimes – Van Andel Institute
Comparing novel total RNA-seq methods: a follow up

Abbirami Sathappan – Sidra Medicine
Genomic Profiling of Neuroblastoma Tumor Microenvironment:
Uncovering Targets for Pediatric Cancer Immunotherapy

2024

Bradley F. Guilliams - Colorado State University 
A Cloneable Selenium Nanoparticle Imparts Contrast in Cryo-Electron Microscopy 

Amy Lyndaker - Cornell University
Automated workflow for ultra-high-throughput mapping of genome-wide protein binding

Murray Tipping - Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Atomic Force Microscopy Characterization of Tumor Mechanobiology

Margaret Ushman - Mayo Clinic 
Starting Cell Number Limits for the Maxpar Direct Immune Profiling Assay for mass cytometry.

2023

Patricia Basta - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Method comparison for circulating free fetal DNA (cffDNA) extraction from plasma samples of women during pregnancy in support of noninvasive
perinatal sequencing for precision medicine prenatal care

Norah Brown - Stanford University
Increasing Observability of the Phosphoproteome in Brain Tissue

Marie Dinh - NASA Ames Research Center
A Soil Microbial Workflow from DNA Extraction to Amplicon Sequencing

2022

Morgan Coleman - Morehouse School of Medicine
Thermostability of a Plant Protein MoMo30 using a CFX Real-Time Thermocycler

Charles Farnsworth - Cell Signal Technology
Discovering substrates of PRMT5 and CDK4/6 in human melanoma cells with antibody-based PTM peptide specific enrichment strategies

Laura Lewis-Tuffin - Mayo Clinic Florida
Preventing damage to shared use slide scanners: A systematic study of factors that affect curing of commercially-available hard set mounting medias

Garvey McKenzie - Stanford University
Promega 6x5 and the SUMS Proteomics Workflow

2021

Mark Ivanov - INEPCP RAS, Moscow
Improving the proteoform inference from bottom-up proteomic data using protein identifications from MS1 spectra

Selene Swanson - Stowers Institute for Medical Research
A multi-omics approach to analyze serum using a liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) platform.

Jian Wei Tay - University of Colorado Boulder
Illuminating Photosynthesis in Single Cyanobacterial Cells

2020

Yamna Khurshid - Karachi University
Molecular Characterization and Cytotoxic Activity of McTI, a Novel Cystine-Knot Inhibitor from Momordica charantia

Kathy Schaefer - Howard Hughes Medical Institute
A cytometry-based assay to determine optimal Janelia Fluor dye labelling of Halo and SNAP tags

Jeffrey C. Silva - Adeptrix Corporation
A Targeted Multiplexed MALDI MS Assay Platform using Affinity-Bead Assisted Mass Spectrometry (Affi-BAMS) for Monitoring Brain and CSF Biomarkers

2019

Uma AryalUniversity of Washington and Proteome Software
Analysis of Human Nuclear Protein Complexes by Quantitative Mass Spectrometry Profiling

Eric ChowUniversity of California, San Francisco
MULTI-seq: Scalable Single-Cell RNA-seq Multiplexing Using Lipid-Tagged Indices​

Yurong GaoUniversity of Rochester Medical Center
K-means Spectral Unmixing for Multi-channel Imaging and Image Analysis Platform at a Core Facility

2018

Stephanie Archer-Hartmann University of Georgia
Comprehensive Glycoprotein Analysis at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center

David GoerlitzGeorgetown University Medical Center
Comparison of the Performance of two RNA Isolation Protocols and Three Analysis Platforms to Detect Exosome-derived miRNA Expression Profiles

Ryan LeibStanford University
Multidimensional Optimization for Deeper FFPE Proteome Profiling

Angel SampsonUniversity of Florida
Cross-core Collaboration toward the Characterization of AAV-Antibody Complex Structure

2017

Brian CapaldoUniversity of Virginia
Cyttools: Open Source Pipeline Framework for Cytometry Data Analysis

Alexander LemenzRutgers University
Use of the Open-Sourced Mycroft AI Skills to Create Automated and Voice Activated Pipelines for Core Facility Standard Bioinformatics Analysis

Nicolas LoofUniversity of Texas Southwestern
New Technique for Sorting Rare Populations of Cells

Samantha SevillaNational Institutes of Health
Formalin-Fixed-Paraffin-Embedded Extraction Benchmarking Evaluation

2016

Monica DeLayCincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
Abstract Title: Enrichment of CRISPR-mediated homologous-directed repair in mammalian cells by cell cycle-based flow sorting

Jeanne GeskesUniversity of Michigan
Abstract Title: Comprehensive Assessment of Custom Targeted Panels for Next Gen Sequencing

Brian SearleUniversity of Washington and Proteome Software
Abstract Title: A comprehensive analysis of peptide degradation over time

Katia Sol-ChurchNemours/Alfred I. DuPont Hospital For Children
Abstract Title: Inherited recessive epigenetic and genetic compound heterozygote mutations cause Baratela Scott Syndrome in a subset of patient with rare skeletal dysplasia.

Past Presentations

2025

Patricia Basta – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Method comparison for RNA extraction to be used for potential differential
expression analysis of salamanders undergoing winter dormancy
Presentation

James Cox – University of Utah
Comparative Study of Lipidomic Profiles in Fed versus Fasted States
and Across Blood Collection Tube Matrices: Implications for Medium to Large-Scale Epidemiological Studies
Presentation

Brennan Grimes – Van Andel Institute
Comparing novel total RNA-seq methods: a follow up
Presentation

Abbirami Sathappan – Sidra Medicine
Genomic Profiling of Neuroblastoma Tumor Microenvironment:
Uncovering Targets for Pediatric Cancer Immunotherapy
Presentation

Carole Perrot - Johns Hopkins
Empowering Research Through Specialized Training in Microscopy, Flow Cytometry, and Genomics
Presentation 

Catharine Aquino - Functional Genomics Center Zurich
Evaluating NGS-based OlinkTechnology and mass spectrometry-based workflows for plasma and serum proteomics
Presentation 

Claudius Mundoma - Stanford University 
FAIR Facilities and Instruments: Enabling transparency, reproducibility, and equity through persistent identifiers
Presentation 

Gabriela De la Cruz - UNC-CH School of Medicine
From Method Development to Discovery: Innovating Spatial Transcriptomics with Xenium
Presentation 

S. Garvey McKenzie, Ph.D. - Stanford University Mass Spectrometry
Impact of Divalent Metal Ions on the Proteomics S-TrapFilter Digestion Protocol
Presentation 

Marjolijn Hameetman -Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands
FlowMonitor: an R-shiny application for advanced monitoring of flow cytometer performance
Presentation

Dr. Indrani Bhowmick - Analytical Resources Core
Action to streamline services and increase community engagement: Innovative Workflows
Presentation 

James Shira –Arizona Genetics Core, University of Arizona
An inexpensive method for collection of high-quality RNA from blood of surgical patients
Presentation 

Jared Slobodan - Ranger Technology
Optimizing Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis for Accessible Sample QC in Long Read Sequencing Workflows
Presentation 

Juan Pablo Galindo Lazo - Stanford University Mass Spectrometry
Byonic vs. FragPipe: Comparing Performance and Efficiency in Proteomics Workflows
Presentation

Kara A. Clissold, M.A.- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Pilot Project Funding: Return on Investment and Impact of a “Core Voucher” Program
Presentation

Katelyn Becker - Van Andel Institute
Whole Genome Enzymatic Methylation Assay Comparison
Presentation

Patrick Badua - Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Leaning Our Cores
Presentation

Shixia Huang, PhD - Baylor College of Medicine
Advanced Technologies and STEMM Education
Presentation 

Robert Wappel - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 
Room Temperature Storage of Nucleic Acids
Presentation

Yeong Yun - Van Andel Institute
Assessing nucleic acid extraction and library preparation kits for cell-free DNA and RNA
Presentation

Zoe Senn - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Utilizing Salesforce to Optimize Ordering & Billing Workflows for Cores with External Customer Bases
Presentation