New Frontiers in Non-Target Screening: Roundtable Symposium
Thursday, April 23, 2026, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM EDT
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New Frontiers in Non-Target Screening: Roundtable Symposium
The Analytical Scientist, in collaboration with the International Conference on Non-Target Screening (ICNTS), presents a roundtable symposium exploring emerging frontiers in non-target screening (NTS), spanning pharma and metabolomics, food science, environmental analysis, and materials and process monitoring. As non-target screening continues to expand, the field is being reshaped by advances in high-resolution instrumentation, data analytics, and workflow design. Across disciplines, researchers face common challenges: extracting meaningful insight from highly complex data, building robust and scalable analytical pipelines, and translating discovery-driven workflows into tools that support real-world decision-making.
This session will feature four short, focused presentations, each highlighting cutting-edge developments at a distinct NTS frontier, followed by a moderated roundtable discussion and live audience Q&A. By bringing together perspectives from diverse application areas, the symposium aims to foster interdisciplinary understanding, surface transferable best practices, and identify shared solutions to common analytical challenges. Together, the speakers will examine how non-target screening can evolve toward more integrated, sustainable, and broadly applicable analytical frameworks – and what will be required to bridge gaps between disciplines.
The presentations will cover:
Pharma & Metabolomics – Strategies for Non-Targeted Metabolomics
Ian Wilson and Rob Plumb will explore high-resolution, non-targeted metabolomics approaches applied to biofluids and tissues, demonstrating how discovery-mode workflows can deliver new insights into drug pharmacology, toxicity, and systems-level biology.
Food Science – Non-Target Screening of Protein Modifications
Sabrina Gensberger-Reigl will focus on the untargeted profiling of post-translational modifications (PTMs) in food proteins, highlighting how tailored analytical workflows, curated databases, and advanced bioinformatics are essential for revealing processing-induced changes.
Environmental Analysis – Scalable NTS Workflows for Chemical Risk Prioritization
Leon Barron will present innovative strategies for large-scale environmental screening, including multimodal passive sampling, citizen science, automated sample handling, machine learning, and orthogonal analytical techniques to support both targeted and non-targeted workflows.
Materials & Process Monitoring – NTS in Industrial and Chemical Processes
Stefan Bieber will discuss how NTS can uncover unknown reaction pathways and process-related effects, offering new perspectives on chemical systems and the influence of external parameters in production environments.
Speakers
Ian Wilson, PhD
After obtaining a PhD from the Chemistry Dept. at Keele Univ. and a Post Doc. at UCL Ian Wilson joined Pharma, (Hoechst, ICI, Zeneca and AstraZeneca) finally moving to Imperial College (London) in 2012 where I am currently a Visiting Prof. and also a visiting Prof at Liverpool Univ.). He uses a high resolution, high throughput non-targeted methods to study metabolic phenotyping (metabonomics/metabolomics), drug metabolism, systems biology and the microbiome. These studies have resulted in ca. 600+ publications and various awards in separation and analytical science from e.g., the RSC and the UK Chrom. Soc.
Sabrina Gensberger-Reigl
Dr. Sabrina Gensberger-Reigl is a tenured senior scientist specializing in food chemistry at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), where she has been employed since 2015. She holds a doctorate in food chemistry with expertise in reactive glucose degradation products in food and medical applications, along with dual state certifications as a food chemist
Her career combines strong academic credentials with international research experience, including a research stay at The University of Tokyo. Dr. Gensberger-Reigl has recently distinguished herself through excellence in both teaching and institutional innovation, receiving the 2025 Ars Legendi Faculty Award for outstanding university teaching in chemistry and the 2025 Renate Wittern-Sterzel Award for establishing a pioneering maternity protection laboratory at FAU. Her work demonstrates sustained commitment to advancing food chemistry research while championing supportive academic environments for working parents.
Leon Barron
Dr. Leon Barron is Professor of Analytical and Environmental Sciences at Imperial College London. He holds a BSc(hons) and PhD in analytical chemistry at Dublin City University, Ireland. He was Lecturer and then Senior lecturer in Forensic Science at King’s College London for 11 years until 2020 when he moved to Imperial to lead the Emerging Chemical Contaminants team within the Environmental Research Group. His research aims to further our understanding of the sources, risks and impacts existing, emerging and new chemical contaminants on environmental and public health including through non-target screening.
Stefan Bieber
Dr. Stefan Bieber is a co-founder and executive director at AFIN-TS GmbH and has worked for many years in developing Non-Target Screening strategies.
He is responsible for the development, utilization and communication of new and innovative analytical technologies in the field of non-target screening. These include polarity-extended chromatographic techniques, such as SFC coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry, but also data evaluation concepts for non-target screening.
Stefan Bieber has studied bioprocessing engineering (B.Sc. and M.Sc.) at the Technical University of Munich. Subsequently, he was a Research Assistant in the Analytical Research group at the Chair of Urban Water Systems Engineering Technical University of Munich. In his PhD thesis, he investigated and assessed national and international management strategies for trace organic compounds and supporting advanced analytical techniques for the detection and monitoring of trace organic compounds in environmental waterbodies.
Rob Plumb
After obtaining BSc in Chemistry in 1992, Robert Plumb worked at Glaxo R&D in Drug Metabolism Department during this time he obtained a Ph.D in Chemistry from University of Hertfordshire. In 2001 he moved to Waters Corporation, MA, USA where he is currently a scientific advisor in the LC-MS organisation and is also a visiting Prof. at Univ. Liverpool. His work focuses on high resolution LC and mass spectrometry for DMPK, metabolic phenotyping and discovery omics, which has resulted in more than 160 peer reviewed publications.
Published
February 25, 2026
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