Sonja Hess

Senior Director, Centre of Genomics Research, Discovery Sciences, R&D BioPharmaceuticals • AstraZeneca

Sonja Hess is a Director of the Dynamic Omics Department at AstraZeneca in Gaithersburg, MD. Previously, she directed the Proteome Exploration Laboratory at the Beckman Institute at California Institute of Technology.

Dr. Hess is a recognized leader who integrates proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and bioinformatics from preclinical to clinical applications. Her lab has developed state-ofthe-art methods and pipelines for large-scale quantitative mass spectrometry applications. Her main focus is to accelerate the drug development process by characterizing mechanisms of disease or resistance and identifying clinical biomarkers. Her tutorials have helped many aspiring mass spectrometrists to become experts in the field.

At California Institute of Technology, Dr. Hess was the first woman to be nominated to be Member of the Beckman Institute. During her academic career, she has received numerous NIH awards and served on many NIH and NSF study sections. She is an Editorial Board Member of PLOS ONE and served as guest editor for Current Proteomics. She has authored and co-authored more than 180 publications and holds two patents in the field of mass spectrometry.