Our Scientific Advisors: Visionaries in Proteomics Innovation

Gloria Sheynkman, PhD

Chair, Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Gloria M. Sheynkman is an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, holding a primary appointment in Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics, secondary appointment in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, and is a member of the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center. She earned her B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Notre Dame and gained early industry experience in the Analytical Development department at Gilead Sciences. She went on to train with Dr. Lloyd Smith—the inventor of automated Sanger sequencing that contributed to the Human Genome Project—where she earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Following her doctoral work, she trained with Dr. Marc Vidal at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, where she advanced high-throughput functional proteomics strategies to characterize proteoforms involved in both normal physiology and disease. 

Building on this foundation, Dr. Sheynkman now leads a highly interdisciplinary research group that combines advanced mass spectrometry, long-read RNA sequencing, and single-molecule protein sequencing to map and characterize diverse “proteoforms”—protein isoforms arising from nature’s “variations”, such as alternative splicing and post-translational modifications. Her team employs machine learning and integrative network biology to uncover how these proteoforms drive complex diseases, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. 

A recipient of numerous honors—including the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Emerging Investigator distinction and the Tomas A. Hirschfeld Award from the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACS)—Dr. Sheynkman has published over 40 peer-reviewed papers in her relatively short time as a faculty member. She is active in multiple professional organizations, including the American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG), American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), Consortium for Top-Down Proteomics (CTDP), Human Proteome Organization (HUPO), and ASMS. She has chaired prominent conference sessions, serves on several NIH study sections, and her research is continuously supported by multiple NIH grants and additional external awards. 

In her advisory roles, Dr. Sheynkman brings extensive expertise in bridging genomics with proteomics and a forward-looking perspective on the future of protein measurement technologies. 

Ben Garcia, PhD

Member, Scientific Advisory Board

Benjamin A. Garcia obtained his BS in Chemistry at UC Davis in 2000, where he worked as an undergraduate researcher in Prof. Carlito Lebrilla’s laboratory. He received his PhD in Chemistry in 2005 at the University of Virginia under Prof. Donald Hunt and then was an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois under Prof. Neil Kelleher from 2005-2008. From there Ben was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Molecular Biology Department at Princeton University from 2008-2012, until his recruitment as the Presidential Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in 2012, promoted to full Professor in 2016, and named the John McCrea Dickson M.D. Presidential Professor in 2017.

Ben moved in the summer of 2021 to the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to become the Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. The Garcia lab has been developing and applying novel proteomic approaches and bioinformatics for interrogating protein modifications, especially those involved in epigenetic mechanisms such as histones during human disease, publishing over 450 publications.  He is presently an Associate Editor of the Analytical Chemistry, and Mass Spectrometry Reviews journals; and serves on the editorial boards for the Molecular Omics, the Journal of Proteome Research and the Molecular and Cellular Proteomics journals. He is the President-Elect of the U.S. Human Proteome Organization (HUPO), on the HUPO Governing Council/Executive Committee and the Chair-Elect of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Analytical Chemistry Division.

Ben has been recognized with many honors and awards for his mass spectrometry research including the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Research Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the PITTCON Achievement Award, the Ken Standing Award, the ACS Arthur F. Findeis Award, the ASMS Biemann Medal, the HUPO Discovery in Proteomic Sciences Award, the Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) Outstanding Achievement in Mass Spectrometry Award and was named a Fellow of both the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry. 

Brad Pentelute, PhD

Member, Scientific Advisory Board

Bradley L. Pentelute is a Professor of Chemistry at MIT (https://pentelutelabmit.com). He is also an Associate Member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, an Extramural Member of the MIT Koch Cancer Institute, and Member, Center for Environmental Health Sciences MIT. He received his undergraduate degree in Psychology and Chemistry from the University of Southern California, and his M.S and Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Chicago with Prof. Steve Kent.  He was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. R. John Collier at Harvard Medical School, Microbiology.

Denis Zaccarin, PhD

Member, Scientific Advisory Board

Denis Zaccarin occupied various R&D leadership positions at Pacbio from 2004 to 2024. He initially led the engineering team through the development of the RS sequencer, and then became VP Semiconductor Integrated Devices, leading the team responsible for the development of the family of consumables used in the Sequel and Sequel II product lines. He was promoted to Senior Vice President Research and Development in 2020, responsible for leading the R&D teams for the long-read and the short-read sequencing product offerings. 

Prior to joining Pacbio, he held various engineering and leadership positions in the telecom industry at companies such as Bell-Northern Research, Nortel, ONI Systems and Ciena. Denis Zaccarin holds a BSc engineering (1987), MSc engineering (1989) from Laval University and PhD in electrical engineering, Optics (1993) from the University of Ottawa.