John B. Fenn Distinguished Contribution

Eligibility & How To Submit a Nomination | Deadline: November 30

GO TO ONLINE AWARDS PLATFORM to start your nomination. You will register (create) an account, or retrieve your password from last year, with our special awards platform and then get started by selecting 'John B. Fenn Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry' from the dropdown list of awards.

Eligibility
Nominee must be a current member of ASMS.

Information & Elements Needed for Nomination

• Nominee name, affiliation, position title, email, mobile phone number, and ASMS member status.
• Nominator name and email.
• 1-2 concise sentence(s) to state a focused or singular achievement in basic or applied mass spectrometry (50 words max). This may be excerpted from the fuller description document.
• Fuller description of the nominee's a focused or singular achievement in basic or applied mass spectrometry (1-page max). PDF only.
• List of the nominee’s publications pertaining to the significant achievement. PDF only.
• Specific publications relevant to the achievement. Up to two articles, one is required. 
• Two support letters. Gather and upload the two letters OR choose to send a special upload link via the awards platform.

NOVEMBER 30 DEADLINE

Eligibility is restricted to members of ASMS. Nominations will be held for three years. 

Albert J.R. Heck, 2026 Recipient

Albert J.R Heck is the recipient of the John B. Fenn Distinguished Contribution Award, in recognition for his pioneering work in method development and applications of native mass spectrometry, especially for the study of the structure, function and assembly of very large macromolecular complexes, e.g. viruses and immune complexes.

Albert Heck is Distinguished Faculty Professor at Utrecht University leading a group devoted to the development and applications of mass spectrometry for both proteomics and structural biology. Through introducing mass analyzers with extended mass range Heck unlocked the field of mass spectrometry based structural virology, but also extended the role of mass spectrometry in the analysis of advanced biopharmaceuticals (e.g. antibodies, AAVs). The distinct versatility of Heck is evidenced by that he also pioneered several proteomics technologies for phospho-enrichment, use of alternative proteases, hybrid peptide fragmentation techniques (e.g. EThcD), cost-effective dimethyl labeling and proteome-wide cross-linking.

Heck is recipient of several awards including the ACS 2016 Field & Franklin Award, the IMSF 2018 Thomson Medal Award and the FEBS Sir Hans Krebs medal. Heck is member of EMBO and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2017 Heck received the most prestigious science Award in the Netherlands, namely the Spinoza Prize.