Professor Michael L. Gross joined the faculty at the University of Nebraska in 1988 after post-doctoral studies with Professor Fred McLaffarty at Purdue University. Grounded in his formal training as an organic chemist, Professor Gross was an early leader in the study of ion-molecule reactions using mass spectrometry. In 1978, Gross, along with Charles Wilkens and Gerhard Miesels, was successful in obtaining funding to establish an NSF regional instrumentation facility in mass spectrometry. The Midwest Center for Mass Spectrometry (MCMS) soon became internationally known as a leading laboratory in mass spectrometry. In 1982 the first commercially available tandem magnetic sector mass spectrometry was added to the facility. In the years following, NCMS played a pioneering role in the development of tandem mass spectrometry in the study of biomolecules. Gross was named as a 3M Alumni Professor of Chemistry in 1983 and a C. Petrus Peterson Professor of Chemistry in 1988.
Professor Gross has over 400 publications in mass spectrometry and has received numerous awards including the American Chemical Society Field and Franklin medal for excellence in mass spectrometry in 1999. He has served as the editor-in-chief for the Journal of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry since 1990.
Professor Gross left the University of Nebraska in 1994 to become Professor of Chemistry, Medicine, and Immunology and Principal Investigator of the NIH Mass Spectrometry Research Resource at Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests continue in the development of mass spectrometric methods to understand interactions between proteins and ligands, the gas-phase chemistry of oligodeoxynucleotides, and the development of Fourier transform mass spectrometry.
We gratefully acknowledge Professor Michael Gross for his support of this lectureship.
Past Recipients
- 2019 - Gary Siuzdak
- 2018 - Carlito Lebrilla
- 2017 - Catherine Costello
- 2014 - Alan Marshall
- 2012 - Vicki Wysocki
- 2008 - Igor Kaltashov
- 2008 - John Klassen
- 1999 - Marvin Vestal
- 1998 - Michael Gross