Zackary (Ari) M. Herbst
They/Them
I am agender and demisexual and I am a bioanalytical chemist and mass spectrometrist.//
I am a Research Scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle and the Chief Science Officer of the company GelbChem, LLC. I received my B.A. in chemistry and studio art at Knox College in Illinois, where I also completed a post-baccalaureate program in organic chemistry. After college, I spent time in St. Louis in the pharmaceutical industry as an analytical chemist and formulations scientist before moving to Seattle. For the past six years, I have focused on the fields of Newborn Screening for Lysosomal Storage Disorders and supporting multiple projects tackling drug development for neglected tropical diseases (e.g., Chagas disease). Science communication is important to me as a scientist with autism, and I graduated in 2017 from the University of Washington’s Scientific Illustration Program. Some of my published illustrations were in support of a paper outlining gender-affirming surgical techniques. In 2020, I joined the team at GelbChem, LLC with the mission of providing quality reagents and novel analytical methodologies in support of global heritable disease research and Newborn Screening. In my future, I dream of using my background in art and science to make research more accessible and digestible to the public.