Evolving Microbes and Global Health
Event Slider
Date
- Tue, Wed, Thu and Fri,
Location
Instituto Gulbenkian de CiênciaRua da Quinta Grande, 6
2780-156 Oeiras
Microbes are everywhere, greatly influencing human health. This can be directly by being in contact with the human body, such as the gut microbiota, or as infectious agents. They also impact our well-being indirectly by changing the environment and affecting global food production. Their rapid evolution is a double-edged sword. Microbes can acquire pathogenic traits or be engineered to perform beneficial functions.
Understanding how and when “good” or “bad” microbial properties emerge in nature, the mechanisms by which they affect human health, and our responses to that are vital topics often discussed separately.
In this meeting, we aim to unite scientists studying evolving microbes’ direct and indirect effects on human health.
Important dates
Scientific Organizers Program Registration
Speakers
-
Alvaro San Millan
Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia
Alvaro San Millan is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine who earned his PhD in microbiology in 2010. He worked as a postdoc at Craig MacLean’s lab at the University of Oxford from 2012 to 2016. Subsequently, he returned to Spain to establish his own research group and in 2020 he secured a permanent position at the National Center for Biotechnology in Madrid (PBE lab, www.pbelab.es). Alvaro studies the evolution of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance. His contributions include shedding light on the roles of plasmids as drivers of bacterial adaptation and conducting research on the epidemiology and evolution of antibiotic resistance genes in clinical settings. Notably, he provided the first description of within-patient plasmid transfer and evolution.
-
Anna-Liisa Laine
University of Helsinki
-
Ary Hoffmann
University of Melbourne
Ary Hoffmann is a biologist undertaking research on bacterial symbionts of disease vectors, pest control, and climate change adaptation. His group is exploring novel approaches for suppressing disease transmission in mosquito vectors and in decreasing agricultural pest damage. Hoffmann has worked collaboratively with mosquito programs around the world and with local pest control agencies. His microbe work has focussed particularly on using Wolbachia and Regiella endosymbionts to suppress dengue and plant virus transmission. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science a foreign fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, and a Companion of the Order of Australia. He heads a research team located at the Bio21 Institute of the University of Melbourne where he is a Laureate Professor and he is also a Distinguished Professor at Aalborg University.
-
Elena Litchman
Carnegie Institution for Science/ Stanford University
-
Katia Koelle
Emory University
-
Judith Berman
Tel Aviv University/ University of Minnesota
Judith Berman is a Professor at Tel Aviv University since 2012 and Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota. She studies how pathogenic yeasts respond to their environments, primarily using Candida albicans and Candida glabrata. Her work strives to understand drug response mechanisms caused by genetic mutations, genomic copy number changes, as well as physiological processes that affect genetically identical cells differently. Her lab takes an interdisciplinary approach using genetics, genomics, and cell biology, combined with chemistry, bioinformatics, and computational biology. She has studied fundamental aspects of morphogenesis, chromosome stability, chromosome components from centromeres to telomeres and origins of replication, chromatin-mediated silencing, gene essentiality, as well as drug resistance. Her recent work addresses drug tolerance, the ability of some cells to grow, albeit slowly, in the presence of a drug that inhibits other cells in the same population. Her group is asking about the isolate-to-isolate and cell-to-cell differences in drug responses. Prof. Berman is an EMBO Member, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology.
-
Mercedes Pascual
New York University
-
Michael Grigg
NIH Intramural Research Program
-
Sara Mitri
University of Lausanne
-
Sébastien Gagneux
Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH)/University of Basel
Sébastien Gagneux is a professor of infectious biology and head of department at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH)/University of Basel. After receiving his PhD from the University of Basel, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, USA. He then started his own laboratory at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London, UK, before joining Swiss TPH in 2010. His research focuses on the ecology and evolution of Mycobacterium tuberculosis with a particular focus on antimicrobial resistance.