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Meet Our Staff

Joe Barycki, Director

Education: B.S. University of Rochester (New York);  Ph.D. University of Delaware, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry ; Post-Doctoral Researcher University of Minnesota, Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology.
Areas of expertise:  enzyme assay development, protein production, macromolecular crystallography, biophysical methods of measuring protein-ligand and protein-protein interactions.
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To Be Named, Associate Director

Education: 


Areas of expertise:  

Pam Bunce, Program Specialist

Pam received a Master’s in Public Administration with a Management concentration from Marist College (NY) and earned a B.S. in Business from Fairfield University (CT). Previously, Pam was Assistant Budget Director at Vassar College (NY) where she worked in the central VP Finance Office assisting senior leadership on long range strategic operational and capital planning, risk management and diverse special projects focusing on qualitative research, process improvement and project management. Her work brought her across campus working on collaborative special projects for Directors in Buildings and Grounds, Controller’s office, Legal, Human Resources and Institutional Research. Pam worked for IBM for seven years as an analyst and has experience with several startup ventures.

Leonard Collins, Research Assistant, Mass Spectrometry
Leonard Collins

Leonard earned a Bachelor of Science inChemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993. He began his career as an analytical chemist in RTP by working in pharmaceutical QA testing and then agrichemical environmental fate testing. While working at the Mississippi State Chemical Lab from 1999 to 2005, he earned an MBA in 2004. Leonard became a Research Specialist at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2006 and worked in the Biomarker Mass Spectrometry facility until arriving at NC State in 2020. Leonard has experience developing mass spectrometry methods for DNA and RNA oligos, DNA damage products, single nucleotides, intact proteins and peptides, natural molecules and metabolites, drugs and metabolites, and environmental contaminants such as PAHs and PFAS.

Jeff Enders, Senior Research Scholar, Mass Spectrometry
Jeff Enders image

Jeff earned his B.S. in chemistry and M.S. in analytical chemistry, concurrently, from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 2007. Following this, he attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, earning his Ph.D. in 2012. His thesis work focused on combining microfluidics with ion mobility-mass spectrometry techniques to probe in vitro toxicological stimuli under the guidance of Dr. John McLean. Following graduation, Jeff worked for six years in industry developing small molecule quantitative mass spectrometric assays using triple quadrupole and quadrupole time-of-flight instrumentation. Since starting at NC State in 2017, Jeff has managed projects in the areas of proteomics, metabolomics, glycomics, environmental contaminants, and elemental analysis.

Dániel Krakkó, Research Scholar, Mass Spectrometry
Dániel Krakkó

Dániel received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry with a focus on Analytical Chemistry at the Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary. After finishing his Ph.D., he joined Dr. Andras Perl’s group at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY, where he was conducting metabolomic studies in mouse models and cell lines. Overall, he has over six years of experience in small molecule mass spectrometry.

Qingbo Shu, Research Scholar, Mass Spectrometry
Qingbo Shu

Qingbo received his Ph.D. in Biophysics at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences with Prof. Fuquan Yang, focusing on comparative proteomics studies in prostate cancer samples. He continued his formal training with Dr. Tony Ye Hu at Tulane University where he focused on developing mass spectrometry-based blood tests for infectious diseases diagnosis. He has over ten years of experience in the mass spectrometry field working on various projects in metabolomics, proteomics, and lipidomics.

Whitney Stutts, Senior Research Scholar, Mass Spectrometry

Whitney received her B.S. in Chemistry at North Carolina State University and Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Florida. Her doctoral research in Dr. Richard Yost’s group involved developing matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization tandem mass spectrometry and mass spectrometric imaging techniques for the analysis of lipids and their degradation products in biological tissues. Prior to joining METRIC, Whitney completed a postdoctoral fellowship and worked as a Chemist in the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Her work at the FDA primarily involved developing and validating analytical methods for the separation, detection and quantification of toxins in foods and dietary supplements. She has more than thirteen years of experience in small molecule mass spectrometry, including lipidomics, metabolomics and mass spectrometric imaging.

Jennifer Sun, Senior Research Scholar, MR Spectroscopy
Jennifer Sun

Jennifer obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry at University of Michigan – Ann Arbor with Prof. Dr. Hashim Al-Hashimi. Before she joined the NMR facility in North Carolina State University, she worked as Scientist in P&G focused on studying small molecules and polymers. She has over ten years of experience in the NMR field working on various projects in the areas of small molecule, polymer, chemical engineering, food science, soil study, metabolomics, and bio-medical engineering.

Paul Swartz, Research Assistant Professor, X-ray Crystallography
Paul Swartz image

Paul received his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry, in 1985, from Oklahoma State University working on mammalian NAD Kinase characterization and niacin production in plants.  He received his MS degree in Biochemistry, in 1987, from the same institution studying insect pheromones using GC/MS techniques. Paul received his Ph.D. from Washington State University, in 1996, in Biochemistry working with Dr. Toshiko Ichiye and studying redox proteins using molecular dynamics simulations and semi-empirical QM methods. Following were a post-doctoral position at University of Washington, Texas A&M University, University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University.  Paul was then employed by North Carolina State University Department of Molecular and Structural Biochemistry to manage and operate the macromolecular x-ray crystallography laboratory and access to the beamlines available at Southeast Regional Collaborative Access Team (SERCAT).  He has been in that position since 2004 and has assisted researchers in collecting data for, modelling, and depositing about 180 crystal structures to the PDB and preparing about 75 publications.

Peter Thompson, Senior Research Scholar, MR Spectroscopy
Peter Thompson

Peter received his B.S. in Biochemistry at North Carolina State University and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the lab of Dr. Sharon Campbell. He used NMR and other biophysical and biochemical techniques in his doctoral work to study the function of the vinculin tail domain in cellular adhesion. He then did his postdoctoral work with Dr. Bob London and Dr. Geoffrey Mueller at NIEHS, where he studied allergen:lipid interactions. Peter has used NMR spectroscopy to study biomolecular systems since 2009. His areas of expertise include protein structure, protein dynamics, protein:ligand interactions, and metabolomics, including the use of Chenomx software.

Rebecca Weed, Research Scholar, Mass Spectrometry
Rebecca Weed

Rebecca received her B.S. in Biology from Middle Georgia State University in 2008 and her Ph.D. in Molecular Plant Sciences from Washington State University in 2019. Using a metabolomic approach, her doctoral work focused on understanding allelopathic interactions in invasive plants and how fungal pathogens can modulate the plant host’s metabolome to escape detection. She has over six years of mass spectrometry and metabolomics experience focused on analyzing small molecules from various plant species. During her time at METRIC, Rebecca has worked on developing methods to quantify per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from either water and biological matrices.

Taufika Islam Williams, Senior Research Scholar, Mass Spectrometry
Taufika Islam Williams

Taufika received her B.A. degree, double majoring in Chemistry and Mathematics, from Transylvania University in Lexington, KY. She received her M.S. degree in Analytical Chemistry from Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, under the guidance of Dr. R. Graham Cooks. Her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry was from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY, in the laboratory of Dr. Bert C. Lynn. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship under the guidance of Dr. David C. Muddiman at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. Following a six month tenure as Research Assistant Professor in the Muddiman Laboratory, Taufika spent ten years as the Director of the North Carolina State University Mass Spectrometry Facility. She is an expert in modern proteomics and small molecule mass spectrometry, with 20 years of relevant experience.