Bio

Ian S. Gilmore, National Physical Laboratory, “For pioneering advances in molecular imaging by mass spectrometry with impact in biomedical research and novel devices and championing international standardization”

Ian S. Gilmore is a Senior Fellow at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK and a visiting Professor in the school of pharmacy at the University of Nottingham. Following a B.Sc. in Physics at the University of Manchester, he joined Dr Martin P. Seah at the NPL to develop a measurement base for secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). His PhD led to a number of important advances including a novel method, Gentle-SIMS, for simplifying the mass spectra. Prof. Gilmore rapidly rose through the ranks becoming a Principal Scientific Officer in 2000 and a Fellow in 2007. At this time, he recognised the power of emerging ambient mass spectrometries and built-up expertise in mass spectrometry imaging with a vision that these methods could be of great benefit to biomedical researchers. In 2013, he established the National Centre of Excellence in Mass Spectrometry Imaging to provide academic and industry researchers access to state-of-the-art capability. A transformative moment then came with a new collaboration with Sir Colin Dollery, a clinical pharmacologist at GSK. Sir Colin was driven to improve the efficacy of medicines and success rates in drug development. To do this, measurement of precisely where the drug is within a single cell and corresponding metabolic changes were needed. Time-of-flight SIMS showed promise but lacked sensitivity and molecular identification was ambiguous.  Prof. Gilmore had an idea for a revolutionary new instrument using an ingenious hybrid approach where the high mass resolution, but slow speed, of an Orbitrap mass spectrometer complements the high-speed, but low mass spectrometry performance, of a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The OrbiSIMS instrument was introduced in 2017 with ground-breaking results revolutionising the ability to measure chemistry at surfaces and nanoscale interfaces. Now commercialised, many OrbiSIMS are in use in academia and industry around the world leading to wide impact. In 2017, he was promoted to Senior Fellow and he is now pioneering advances in cryo-OrbiSIMS for native state biological imaging and with NPL colleagues has invented a quantum detection system for Orbitraps to boosts the limit of detection by an order of magnitude. 

Prof. Gilmore has served the scientific community as chair of the International Conference Series on SIMS and at the AVS as ASSD chair, on the Board of Directors and as a Trustee. He has made major contributions to the surface chemical analysis community through two decades of leadership of international standardisation and as a member of the UK Committee on Research Integrity where he has a focus on developing the principles for trustworthy generative artificial intelligence. Professor Gilmore was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2023 and is a Fellow of the AVS and the Institute of Physics in the UK. He is the recipient of the Alfred Benninghoven Prize (2024), ECASIA Award (2024), IUVSTA Prize for Technology (2022), the UKSAF Riviere Prize (2013) and the Institute of Physics Paterson medal (2004).