Faculty members Daniel Petras and Mingxun Wang have been named two of the top 40 under 40 researchers in analytical chemistry by the Analytical Scientist, an internet publishing company that covers the field of analytical chemistry, science, and measurement.
Each year, the “Top 40 Under 40 Power List” celebrates analytical science’s rising stars and is an editorial recognition of their emerging leadership. Candidates are nominated by readers and shortlisted by an independent expert panel. Besides scientific accomplishment and reputation, the list reflects the visibility and originality of those it recognizes.
Petras is an assistant professor of biochemistry. He earned his doctoral degree in biochemistry from the Technical University of Berlin in 2016 and later conducted postdoctoral research at UC San Diego. Before joining UCR in 2024, he led the Functional Metabolomics Lab at the University of Tübingen in Germany. His research combines mass spectrometry, computational metabolomics, and microbial ecology to study how small molecules mediate chemical interactions within microbial communities and environmental systems. Earlier this year, Petras received an ASMS Research Award for his contributions to metabolomics and mass spectrometry research.
Wang is an associate professor of computer science and engineering. He earned his doctoral degree in computer science from UC San Diego and specializes in bioinformatics, computational mass spectrometry, and analytical chemistry. His research develops algorithms and computational tools for analyzing large-scale mass spectrometry data, with applications in biology, chemistry, medicine, and environmental science. Wang’s lab also hosts GNPS2, a large-scale metabolomics platform used by researchers worldwide. More recently, Wang has developed several new computational tools, such as MassQL and the Everything Bagel Feature Finder, that significantly streamline the analytical science community’s ability to preprocess and mine data from small to repository scales.