John Yates III

Meet John Yates III

Most important lesson Tenacity is most important.

Encounters with serendipity Maybe, but there have been many more “aha” moments. One of the first was when I first tried to search tandem mass spectra through a set of sequences and it worked well. I expected it not to work.

Most unexpected moments It’s always interesting to see famous people on airplanes. I was once flying to Germany on a business class ticket and, as I was alone, I was upgraded to first class and ended up sitting behind the actor Nick Nolte. I’ve sat next to G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame and across the aisle from the US Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens on flights. For the Star Trek fans, I was once on a flight with Seven of Nine...

Eye on the horizon I expect there to be a push to make proteomic technology better so that it can tackle increasingly complicated problems – in particular, I think proteomics needs to develop a capability for massively parallel analyses. I do believe that proteomics will be increasingly relevant for solving disease-related questions.

Feature article: tas.txp.to/1015/Yates