Cleidiane Zampronio – Chief Technician, School of Life Sciences

Cleidi tells us about her current role, how she began working at Warwick.

What does your role involve?

I am responsible for proteomics analyses at the Proteomics Facility RTP in the School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick. My main role is day-to-day running of the lab. I am involved in sample preparation and training of students and customers to prepare samples in the lab for mass spectrometry analysis. I perform all the mass spectrometers maintenance including calibration and troubleshooting. I perform data analysis using a variety of software such as Mascot, MaxQuant, Perseus and Proteome Discoverer, and send the reports with results to our customers. We have a good interaction with our customers and, when necessary, we meet with them one-to-one to discuss the results and plan their future experiments, trying to help them to solve problems.

When did you join Warwick?

I started working at the Proteomics Facility in December 2014 after eight years working at the Proteomics Facility at the University of Birmingham where I learned a lot about proteomics analysis. Before starting working in Birmingham, I did a post-doc in the Department of Chemistry at University of Warwick using Mass Spectrometry to analyse biological samples. I have a degree in Chemistry and my PhD was in mass spectrometry technique development.

What are your future plans?

I love working at the University, because we have access to the best technologies. Mass Spectrometry technique, for example, is developing very fast and we have in our lab one of the best instruments available for proteomics analysis. I like to be able to follow the cutting edges technologies and help people with their research challenges. Mass spectrometry is a great technique to answer many of the biological questions that our biologists and doctors are tackling nowadays. I like to know that I will be able to give them this support and for this I need to be up-to-date on the latest developments.

Anything you would have done differently or advice you would give to others?

Proteomics analysis is able to find differences between protein expressed in healthy and non-healthy tissues. The challenge now is optimise sample extraction for proteomics analyses from a large number of biological samples and therefore get a better picture of these biological changes. Big data is going to be the future and we need to be prepared to work with it to achieve great results in our research.