Arpana Vaniya, Ph.D.
Dr. Arpana Vaniya is currently the Academic Coordinator at the West Coast Metabolomics Center at University of California, Davis where she develops and leads courses and outreach activities for the WCMC outreach core. These courses & activities are established to train scientists and staff, to exchange tools and ideas in metabolomics and to disseminate results of metabolomics research. West Coast Metabolomics Center is directed by Dr. Oliver Fiehn. Dr. Vaniya started her role as an Academic Coordinator in 2018, previously her role at the Fiehn lab also included being a Postdoctoral Scholar.
Before starting her role as an academic coordinator, Dr. Vaniya received her doctoral degree in Analytical Chemistry from UC Davis. Under the advisement of Dr. Oliver Fiehn, she developed a natural product reference standards mass spectral library for compound identification in metabolomics. Many of her research aims and projects were related to compound identification. Her work was mostly applied to plant-based, food, and agriculture related studies. Dr. Vaniya, originally from Southern California, obtained her B.S. in Chemistry and B.A. in Women’s Studies from UC Riverside.
Dr. Vaniya’s work has been published in many peer-reviewed journals. She has presented her research at many national scientific conferences such as, American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS), Metabolomics Association of North America (MANA), Metabolomics Society (MetSoc), and Phytochemical Society of North America (PSNA). She has received several awards throughout her career, including Dean’s Mentorship Award from College of Biological Sciences at UCD, the NIST Material Measurement Laboratory Outreach Accolade, oral presentation awards, and MetSoc Travel Award.
Outside of work, Dr. Vaniya is involved in many outreach opportunities as she volunteers and mentors at many STEM & female empowered events or programs. She recently won the 2020 Million Women Mentors Trailblazer Award for Mentoring. She particularly focuses on programs that are geared toward young girls in STEM. Such events include, but not limited to; UC Davis Snap the Gap program, Sacramento Valley Association of Women in Science (sac-AWIS) mentorship program, developing a program for Girls in Science Education Fair at the Peregine School at Davis, CA, Women in STEM at the WCMC, WCMC Science with Kids, etc. Dr. Vaniya is also involved in the organization of scientific and professional development opportunities for early-career scientists to help ensure they have access to career advancement resources to better equip them to be leaders and overcome challenges to achieve career success, she is a council member of Early Career Members (ECM) of MANA & chair of WomiX: Womxn in Metabolomics interest group. She is a co-founder of Virtual Podium Online Conference, a weekly platform established to create a sense of community during the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide presentation and learning opportunities about compelling scientific research in fields centered on chemistry, biology, and informatics.
Before starting her role as an academic coordinator, Dr. Vaniya received her doctoral degree in Analytical Chemistry from UC Davis. Under the advisement of Dr. Oliver Fiehn, she developed a natural product reference standards mass spectral library for compound identification in metabolomics. Many of her research aims and projects were related to compound identification. Her work was mostly applied to plant-based, food, and agriculture related studies. Dr. Vaniya, originally from Southern California, obtained her B.S. in Chemistry and B.A. in Women’s Studies from UC Riverside.
Dr. Vaniya’s work has been published in many peer-reviewed journals. She has presented her research at many national scientific conferences such as, American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS), Metabolomics Association of North America (MANA), Metabolomics Society (MetSoc), and Phytochemical Society of North America (PSNA). She has received several awards throughout her career, including Dean’s Mentorship Award from College of Biological Sciences at UCD, the NIST Material Measurement Laboratory Outreach Accolade, oral presentation awards, and MetSoc Travel Award.
Outside of work, Dr. Vaniya is involved in many outreach opportunities as she volunteers and mentors at many STEM & female empowered events or programs. She recently won the 2020 Million Women Mentors Trailblazer Award for Mentoring. She particularly focuses on programs that are geared toward young girls in STEM. Such events include, but not limited to; UC Davis Snap the Gap program, Sacramento Valley Association of Women in Science (sac-AWIS) mentorship program, developing a program for Girls in Science Education Fair at the Peregine School at Davis, CA, Women in STEM at the WCMC, WCMC Science with Kids, etc. Dr. Vaniya is also involved in the organization of scientific and professional development opportunities for early-career scientists to help ensure they have access to career advancement resources to better equip them to be leaders and overcome challenges to achieve career success, she is a council member of Early Career Members (ECM) of MANA & chair of WomiX: Womxn in Metabolomics interest group. She is a co-founder of Virtual Podium Online Conference, a weekly platform established to create a sense of community during the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide presentation and learning opportunities about compelling scientific research in fields centered on chemistry, biology, and informatics.