Lipidomics Chronicles

The Lipidomics Forum conference series started in 2015 as an initiative of Robert Ahrends and Dominik Schwudke to provide a platform for lipid analytics and lipidomics. As core theme of each installment of the series, we discuss newest analytical developments including pre-analytics, sample preparation, instrumental innovation and informatics approaches. For each of the Lipidomics Forum conferences, we choose additional themes around biomedical research inviting experts in the chosen field. In 2026, we set the theme ‘From lipid composition to membrane organization and physics’.

Nowadays, the Lipidomics Forum conferences are a joint effort of the University of Vienna, Research Center Borstel and the International Lipidomics Society. It is further supported by the German Society for Mass Spectrometry (DGMS) to promote lipidomics research at national and European level. Since 2017, the Lipidomics Informatics for Life Science consortium (LIFS), part of the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure-de.NBI, has supported us organizing the LIFS bioinformatics tools workshop.

Over the past 10 years we had outstanding opening keynotes from internatioal renowned scientists.

2015
Kai Simons, From lipid rafts to clinical lipidomics
2016
Konrad Sandhoff, Membrane lipids regulate lysosomal sphingolipid catabolism, its enzymes and lipid transfer proteins
2017
Teymuras Kurzchalia, In search for novel lipids with unknown functions
2018
Ole G. Mouritsen, Gastrophysics for lipid physicists
2019
Satyajit Mayor, The skin of a living cell: an active actin-membrane composite
2021
Ilya Levental, Membrane lipidomics at the nexus of biophysics and cell physiology
2023
Frances Platt, Sphingolipid lysosomal storage diseases
2024
David G. Russell, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb): the pathogenic greaseball
2025
Kirsten Sandvig, Cellular membrane dynamics and lipid composition

Former programs can be downloaded here: