Laurence Florens established the Systems Mass Spectrometry Center, formerly known as Proteomics, at the Stowers Institute in July 2003 with Mike Washburn. Ever since, Florens has developed, adopted, and applied advanced mass spectrometry-based approaches to drive biological discovery in a wide array of collaborative projects, leading to over 250 peer-reviewed publications with 47 different labs.

A native of France, Florens graduated from Nice University with a B.S. in biochemistry. She received an M.S. and Ph.D. in structural biology and microbiology from Aix-Marseilles I University before completing a postdoctoral fellowship in bioenergetics at Michigan State University. Florens joined the lab of John R. Yates at The Scripps Research Institute, where she applied proteomics to the malaria parasite. While at the Stowers Institute, she has continued working on apicomplexan parasites’ proteomes via NIH-supported collaborations.

Florens is the 2006 co-recipient of the Hudson Prize from the M.R. and Evelyn Hudson Foundation. She has been a faculty member at the Graduate School of the Stowers Institute since its inception and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Proteome Research, for which she is guest-editing a biennial special issue series on Methods for Omics Research.