KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Andreas Baumler
'I'm a Professor of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California at Davis. Our work during the age of microbiome research has generated a novel perspective of host-pathogen interaction in the gastrointestinal tract. This view suggests that the host represents a foundation species that uses its immune system as a habitat filter to shape the gut microbiota, which in turn protects against ecosystem invasion by opportunistic pathogens through priority effects that are based on niche modification or niche preemption. Frank pathogens can overcome these priority effects by using their virulence factors to manipulate host-derived habitat filters, thereby constructing new nutrient-niches in the intestinal lumen that support ecosystem invasion. The emerging picture identifies pathogens as ecosystem engineers and suggests that virulence factors are useful tools for identifying host-derived habitat filters that balance the microbiota.'
Corina P.D. Brussaard
In the seas and oceans, an estimated 1023 viral infections take place every second. The numerically dominant viruses represent not only a huge reservoir of genetic diversity, infecting organisms from small to large, they are also key players in regulating host population dynamics and as such a driving force behind biodiversity and biogeochemical cycling. To comprehend the impact marine viruses may have on marine ecosystem functioning and production, we determined the actual mortality rates of the unicellular algae (phytoplankton) that form the base of the marine food webs and are responsible for half of the oxygen production on Earth. I will illustrate that viral lysis rates of phytoplankton are substantial, affecting the flow of energy and elements differently than thus far thought and modeled.
Dependent on their hosts’ metabolism, viral production is influenced by environmental factors affecting host growth and viability. At the same time, environmental variables regulate viral abundance through particle decay and loss of infectivity. Considering the increasing pressure of global climate change on aquatic systems, it is also timely to study virus-host interactions under different environmental conditions. I will therefore, also explore viral ecology in changing world.
Jean-Laurent Casanova
Jean-Laurent Casanova received his M.D. in 1987 and his Ph.D. in 1992, after training at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne. He was appointed professor at Necker in 1999. There, with Laurent Abel, he cofounded the Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases. He led the experimental lab, whereas Dr. Abel led the computational lab. He was named an international HHMI research scholar while at Necker (2005- 2008). He was appointed professor at Rockefeller University in 2008 and named HHMI investigator in 2014. He and Dr. Abel maintained their lab in Paris, while running their new lab in NY. Over the last 25 years, Dr. Casanova discovered and characterized the first monogenic etiologies for a variety of severe viral, bacterial, and fungal infections that predispose otherwise healthy infants, children, adolescents, and even adults to a single type of infectious disease. These discoveries have provided compelling evidence that life-threatening infectious diseases can be caused by monogenic inborn errors of immunity.
Thijs Ettema
Thijs J. G. Ettema (1977) is an evolutionary microbiologist at Wageningen University (The Netherlands) where he heads the Laboratory of Microbiology. His research focuses on the exploration of microbial diversity with next-generation genomics and various cultivation approaches. He received his PhD at Wageningen University in 2005. After a brief postdoctoral stay at the Radboud University in Nijmegen (The Netherlands), he moved to Uppsala University (Sweden) in 2006, where he was appointed as associate professor at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology in 2014. In 2019, he was appointed as chair professor at Wageningen University. His research group has a broad research focus and works on a variety of scientific questions connected to microbial diversity and evolution that cover all three Domains of Life, as well as viruses. One overarching theme in his research involves the origin of complex cells types (eukaryotes). Recently, his group discovered a new group of archaea, the ASGARD archaea, providing new, compelling evidence that complex cellular life evolved from an archaeal ancestor that was more advanced than was presumed before. Thijs Ettema is the recipient of the 2007 Kluyver award by the Royal Dutch Society for Microbiology, he was named ‘Future Research Leader’ by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research in 2012, and was elected EMBO Young Investigator by the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2016. His research is, amongst others, funded by the European Research Council.
Alexander Horswill
Dr. Alexander Horswill is a Professor in the Department of Immunology & Microbiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. We are focused on Staphylococcus aureus and investigating how this pathogen can regulate group behavior through quorum-sensing and other sensory mechanisms, and how this coordinated action impacts both colonization and pathogenesis. We are also investigating how skin commensal bacteria, such as coagulase-negative Staphylococci, can alter S. aureus disease. The focus of this presentation is on how polymicrobial interactions influence skin disease.
Mariana Pinho
Staphylococcus aureus is a major cause of antibiotic resistant infections, which is sufficient reason to make it an interesting object of study. But it is also an excellent model organism to study cell wall synthesis and cell division. This is because it has a relatively low number of cell wall synthesis proteins, compared to well-studied model organisms, but also because its spherical shape allows observation of the entire machinery that promotes cell division, the divisome, in the imaging plane, during microscopy experiments. In this talk I will address how the divisome in placed at mid cell in spherical cells and what forces are required for divisome constriction and cytokinesis progression in bacteria.
Andrew Pollard
He obtained his medical degree at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, University of London in 1989 and trained in Paediatrics at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, UK, specialising in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at St Mary’s Hospital, London, UK and at British Columbia Children’s Hospital, Vancouver, Canada. He obtained his PhD at St Mary’s Hospital, London, UK in 1999 studying immunity to Neisseria meningitidis in children and proceeded to work on anti-bacterial innate immune responses in children in Canada before returning to his current position at the University of Oxford, UK in 2001. He chaired the UK’s NICE meningitis guidelines development group, the NICE topic expert group developing quality standards for management of meningitis and meningococcal septicaemia.
His research includes the design, development and clinical evaluation of vaccines including those for meningococcal disease and enteric fever and leads studies using a human challenge model of (para)typhoid. He runs surveillance for invasive bacterial diseases and studies the impact of pneumococcal vaccines in children in Nepal and leads a project on burden and transmission of typhoid in Nepal, Bangladesh and Malawi, and co-leads typhoid vaccine impact studies at these sites. He has supervised 37 PhD students and his publications includes over 500 manuscripts and books on various topics in paediatrics and infectious diseases. He chairs the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, is a member of WHO’s SAGE, and chaired the European Medicines Agency scientific advisory group on vaccines (2012-2020). He received the Bill Marshall award of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Disease (ESPID) in 2013, the ESPID Distinguished Award for Education & Communication in 2015 and the Rosén von Rosenstein medal in 2019 awarded by the Swedish Paediatric Society and the Swedish Society of Medicine. He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2016 and is an NIHR Senior Investigator. He made the first British ascent of Jaonli (6632m) in 1988 and Chamlang in 1991 (7309m) and was the Deputy leader of the successful 1994 British Medical Everest Expedition.
He is the Chief Investigator leading the development of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).
Chantal Reusken
Chantal Reusken works as principal expert Virology at the Centre for Infectious Disease Control (CIb) of the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in Bilthoven. Chantal has worked in the field of Virology since 1992 with a focus from the Public Health perspective since 2005. She holds a PhD in Virology from Leiden University.
She worked for five years as group lead Public Health Virology at Erasmus MC and before that for 9 years at CIb-RIVM, the last three years as head of the unit for rare and emerging viral diseases and laboratory response. She is coordinator of the ECDC-funded European expert laboratory network for emerging viral diseases “EVD-LabNet” and chairs the WHO COVID-19 reference lab at RIVM. Furthermore Chantal is regularly serving as expert on international committees and consultant groups of organizations such as ECDC, UNICEF and WHO.
Her activities focus on emerging viral disease laboratory preparedness and response and as such she works at the research-diagnostics interface. Her research has a focus on pathogens moving at the animal-human interphase like arboviruses, rodent-borne viruses, hemorrhagic fever viruses and emerging coronaviruses.
Catherine Stanton
Catherine Stanton (M.Sc. (Nutrition), PhD (Biochemistry,) D.Sc.) is Senior Principal Research Officer at Teagasc , Moorepark Food Research Center, Ireland and Research Professor at University College Cork. She has published extensively on probiotics, nutritional aspects of dairy foods, infant gut microbiota and bioactive lipids, ranking in the top 1% by citations in the field of Agricultural Science (2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020). She is member of The Royal Irish Academy and previously received the “IDF Elie Mechnikoff Award” and ‘ADSA Distinguished Service Award, 2020’. (Researcher ID: https://publons.com/researcher/2443303/catherine-stanton/).
Shiranee Sriskandan
Shiranee Sriskandan is Professor of Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London and a Clinical Infectious Diseases consultant at Hammersmith Hospital. She leads the Gram Positive Pathogenesis research group at Imperial College and MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection focussing on the pathogenesis of group A streptococcal infection. Having trained in medicine at Cambridge University, she specialised in Infectious Diseases in London where she obtained her PhD, then held two postdoctoral research fellowships before tenure. She has held expert advisory roles in relation to maternal sepsis, use of intravenous immunoglobulin, streptococcal vaccines, and prevention of streptococcal outbreaks in healthcare and household settings.
Her talk will address the routes by which the pandemic clone of M1 Streptococcus pyogenes may be changing its phenotype, and explore the historic relevance of this.
Michael Zimmermann
Michael B. Zimmermann received his M.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and did his postgraduate medical training at the University of California in San Francisco. He is Professor and Head of the Human Nutrition Laboratory in the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition at the University of Zurich Hospital, and a Visiting Professor at Wageningen University and the University of Oxford. Prof. Zimmermann has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers and is a Highly Cited Researcher (top 1%) on Web of Science.
He will discuss how iron supplementation in African children may cause adverse changes in the gut microbiome and increase enteropathogens, inflammation and diarrhea, and how these adverse effects may be mitigated by co-provision of prebiotics.