Prof. Ron M.A. Heeren is one of the conference chairs of IMSC 2022 together with Albert Heck and Manfred Wuhrer. Heeren obtained a PhD degree in technical physics in 1992 at the University of Amsterdam on plasma-surface interactions. He was the research group leader at FOM-AMOLF for macromolecular ion physics and biomolecular imaging mass spectrometry in the period 1995-2015. In 2001 he was appointed professor at the chemistry faculty of Utrecht University lecturing on the physical aspects of biomolecular mass spectrometry. In 2014 he was appointed as distinguished professor and Limburg Chair at the University of Maastricht. He is scientific director of M4I, the Maastricht MultiModal Molecular Imaging institute on the Brightlands Maastricht Health campus. There, he heads the division of imaging MS. He is the vice-president of the IMSF and has actively contributed to build a stronger global mass spectrometry community throughout his career. Currently he serves as the chair of the NWO Dutch research community “advanced methods, instrumentation and data analysis” for the life sciences. He was awarded the prestigious 2019 Physics Valorization prize by the Dutch organization for scientific Research, NWO and the 2020 Thomson medal of the international mass spectrometry foundation. His academic research interests are mass spectrometry based personalized medicine, translational molecular imaging and proteomics research, high-throughput bioinformatics and the development and validation of new mass spectrometry based molecular imaging techniques for the life sciences.