The image is like an abstract stained-glass window. Set against a black background, a nexus of fluorescent greens, yellows and blues mushrooms out into purples and deep reds. It’s striking — the beauty of cells when viewed through the lens of mass spectrometry.

“Each color is a different chemical,” explained Elizabeth Neumann, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, as she showcased the image of a spinal cord. “Here’s the white and gray matter; the fluid around the spinal column; the bone, the bone marrow and the muscle around the spinal column. You can actually see a neuron process through the bone.”

Imaging is imperative to molecular biology. To understand human health and disease, scientists need a molecular window into the processes underlying our biology. What is the biochemistry behind gene transcription and protein translation? How does this then lead to the metabolic activity ensuring bodily functionality?

“If you want to study biology, you have to study the chemistry of each of these components spatially,” Neumann said. “Biology also involves communities of cells that are coordinated with one another, and so looking at cellular neighborhoods and how they’re talking to one another and how they’re physically arranged is also important.”

An analytical chemist, Neumann specializes in instrument and method development. She and her team devote their time to designing and advancing mass spectrometry tools that will allow for high-precision chemical measurements and high-resolution imaging. The research runs the gamut, from studying single organelles to whole-body systems. These range in size from nanometers to millimeters and larger.

Underlying Neumann’s research is a drive to increase equity in medicine and healthcare.

“If we think about Alzheimer’s disease, it affects everyone very differently as far as demographical criteria is concerned,” Neumann said. “Can we develop tools and methods that can be used to help us understand how sex, race and other characteristics on things that are fundamental like neurological development and disease?”

For Neumann, the study of chemistry, specifically the development of its tools, provided an avenue to accomplish this. While studying for a doctoral degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, she specialized in high-throughput single-cell mass spectrometry within brain development. She later specialized in mass spectrometry imaging of the kidney while working as a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University, where she helped develop the timsTOF flex system in conjunction with Bruker Scientific.

“I’ve been training for this my whole life in some regard,” Neumann said. “The technical advancements of this instrument really enable high spatial resolution, high-sensitivity applications.”