The editorial team of Metabolites would like to congratulate the winner of the 2018 Metabolites Travel Award at the Metabolomics 2018, held in Seattle (USA) on 24–28 June 2018. The Travel Award was resolved by an evaluation committee formed by Editorial Board Members of the journal.

The Editor-in-Chief of Metabolites, Prof. Peter Meikle (Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Australia), granted the certificate to the winner Mr. Xiaotao Shen (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China), whose work was titled Metabolic Reaction Network-based Recursive Metabolite Identification for Untargeted Metabolomics.

Mr. Xiaotao reported that “the conference had an overall goal of 'Making Connections', with major scientific themes of systems biology, big data, technology advances, precision medicine and translational science, plant metabolomics, the microbiome, and the exposome, including environmental and nutritional metabolomics."

There were a total of 27 oral sessions, 10 plenary and keynote talks, multiple poster sessions, sponsored luncheons, and networking events. There were also several satellite workshops to the conference.

There was also a strong focus on engaging and supporting early career researchers and students, with 33 travel awards and prizes, the majority of which were to support the attendance of these groups. Metabolomics 2018 also had a Bioinformatics Hub. This was a place where informaticians and users gathered with the aim to provide advice, knowledge, and support; to discuss current issues and challenges in computational mass spectrometry with the community; and to work on interesting, synergistic projects and to freely exchange tools, algorithms, and know-how with each other, across all labs, seniorities, and levels of experience.

Mr. Xiaotao also added "I would like to thank both the Local and International Organising Committees of the Metabolomics Society, the EMN, the sponsors, and also all the delegates for such a fantastic event. Additionally, I would like to thank the Metabolites Journal, which granted the travel award to me and supported me to attend this conference. Metabolites is an open-assess international journal for metabolomics and metabolism publications. The journal is very supportive of junior researchers in receiving more academic exchange at international conferences.”

               Mr. Xiaotao Shen acknowledged Metabolites’ support at the Metabolomics 2018

The requirements for applying the 2019 Metabolites Travel Awards will be announced to the public in September 2018 at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/metabolites/awards. Metabolites is very proud to support young scientists and looks forward to receiving applications for the 2019 Awards.