Having IMPACTT 2:
Advancing Microbiome Research
June 2 & 3, 2022
Speaker Profiles
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Francisco J. Quintana
Francisco J. Quintana, PhD is a Professor of Neurology at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and an Associate Member at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Quintana is also the President of the International Society of Neuro Immunology (ISNI). Dr. Quintana, a graduate of the University of Buenos Aires (1999, Argentina), obtained his PhD in immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science (2004, Israel). He received postdoctoral training at the Weizmann Institute of Science and Harvard Medical School. In 2009, Dr. Quintana joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School. Dr. Quintana’s research is focused on Neuroimmunology, investigating signaling pathways that control inflammation and neurodegeneration, with the ultimate goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets and biomarkers for immune-mediated and neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Quintana has published over 200 peer reviewed articles and book chapters. Dr. Quintana’s work identified an important role for the transcription factor AHR in the control of inflammation driven by adaptive and innate immune cells. His work has also defined novel mechanisms by which cell-cell interactions, metabolism, the microbiome, and environmental chemicals control CNS resident cells in health and disease. In addition, Dr. Quintana’s research has resulted in multiple patents which have been the foundation of four companies. Dr. Quintana is the recipient of the Lady Anne Chain Prize for Academic Excellence and Scientific Achievements, the Junior Investigator Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Pathway to Independence Award of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Award for Outstanding Research Achievement form Nature Biotechnology, the Tecan Award for Innovation, the Harry Weaver Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Mentor Award from Harvard Medical School, the Milestones in Multiple Sclerosis Research Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the American Association of Immunologists-BD Biosciences Investigator Award, ISI Most Highly Cited List and the Barancik Prize of Innovation in Multiple Sclerosis Research. In 2021, Dr. Quintana was named the Kuchroo Weiner Distinguished Professor of Neuroimmunology.
Dr. Chun-Jun (CJ) Guo
Dr. Chun-Jun (CJ) Guo is an Assistant Professor in the Jill Roberts Institute (JRI) for Research In Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Guo completed his Doctoral training at the University of Southern California focusing on genome mining of secondary metabolites from filamentous fungi. He did his Postdoctoral training at Stanford University where he studied the small molecules from the human microbiota and investigated how they affect host biology. Dr. Guo joined the faculty at Weill Cornell Medicine – The Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Sep 2018. Dr. Guo will develop a research program focused on dissecting the molecular mechanisms behind microbiome-human interactions. His group will use bioinformatics, molecular genetics, metabolomics, and chemical biology approaches to examine how the microbiota metabolisms affect host metabolism and immunity in the context of health and disease. His research program encompasses microbiome genetics, metabolomics, and mouse models coupled with a significant effort to translate research findings made in mouse models into studies of immune/metabolism-mediated diseases. He is the recipient of 2019 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.
Dr. Deborah Money
Dr. Deborah Money is a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, an associate member in the Department of Medicine and the School of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, an Associate Member of the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Faculty of Science, at the University of British Columbia. She completed residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology, at UBC and then did a Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of Washington, becoming Canada’s first dual specialist in Obstetrics & Gynecology and Infectious Diseases. She is an active clinician scientist in Reproductive Infectious Diseases, based at the Women’s Health Research Institute, leading several large multicentered research projects on HIV in women, HPV and prevention of cervical cancer, and the vaginal microbiome. She led the VOGUE project, a CIHR funded multi-centered study using metagenomics to understand the vaginal microbiome in different cohorts of women. She currently leads a study of the maternal/infant microbiome relationship, ‘Maternal Legacy’. She was most recently the Executive Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, UBC, (2016-2020), ending this role to take on several COVID-19 related projects and responsibilities. She is the lead for CANCOVID-Preg, a Canada-wide surveillance program studying the outcome following COVID-19 for pregnant women and their infants; the lead for a pan-Canadian SARS-CoV-2 serosurveillance study using antenatal sera, and the lead for COVERED, a national study of the safety, effectiveness, and acceptability of the COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant and lactating persons.
Plenary Speakers
Dr. Melanie Conrad
Dr. Melanie Conrad is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Immunology at Charité Medical University in Berlin, Germany. Her research examines how prenatal environmental influences, such as bacterial exposure and antibiotic use, alter immune system development and asthma susceptibility in the offspring. Her lab uses proof-of-concept mouse models to understand the pre- and postnatal mechanisms involved in this transgenerational process. Recently, the Conrad lab has also established a human cohort in the United Kingdom to study how compromised mental health in pregnant women during the pandemic is associated with gut microbiome changes in mothers and their infants, as well as subsequent susceptibility to allergies and asthma in childhood. When not doing science, Melanie can be found training as an acrobat, hoping that the altered perspective provided by doing handstands on people will give her new insights into her research.
Dr. Trevor Lawley
Dr. Trevor Lawley is a Faculty member at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the Chief Scientific Officer of Microbiotica. His research is focused on developing concepts, methods, and tools to enable basic discoveries and translation of medicines and diagnostics from the human microbiome. His science uses large-scale genomics and data-driven approaches in patient cohorts, underpinned by metagenomic analysis, microbial culturing, and machine learning, to investigate the biology of human microbes that are associated with health and a range of diseases, syndromes and developmental disorders. Dr. Lawley has trained scientists who have established independent academic research labs and have pioneered the human microbiome biotechnology sector. Research by Dr. Lawley and his students has been published in Nature, Nature Immunology, Nature Genetics, Cell, and Nature Biotechnology, and has been featured on BBC, CNN, and highlighted in The Economist. In December 2016, Dr. Lawley spun out the biotech company Microbiotica to develop live bacterial therapeutics, biomarkers, and microbiome-based technologies focused on treating patients with autoimmune diseases and cancers. Microbiotica is developing live bacterial therapeutic products, defined consortia of bacteria, as novel medicines for ulcerative colitis patients and melanoma immunotherapy patients.
Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe
Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe obtained her BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of London, and her PhD in Molecular Microbiology through an industrial partnership with Public Health England. Dr. Allen-Vercoe started her faculty career at the University of Calgary in 2005, with a Fellow-to-Faculty transition award through CAG/AstraZeneca and CIHR, to study the normal microbes of the human gut. In particular, she was among the few that focused on trying to culture these ‘unculturable’ microbes in order to better understand their biology. To do this, she developed a model gut system to emulate the conditions of the human gut and allow communities of microbes to grow together, as they do naturally. Dr. Allen-Vercoe moved her lab to the University of Guelph in late 2007, and has been a recipient of several Canadian Foundation for Innovation Awards that have allowed her to develop her specialist anaerobic fermentation laboratory further. This has been boosted by the award of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Gut Microbiome Function and Host Interactions. In 2013, Dr. Allen-Vercoe co-founded NuBiyota, a research spin-off company that aims to create therapeutic ecosystems as biologic drugs, on a commercial scale. The research enterprise for this company is also based in Guelph.
Dr. Lisa Osborne
Dr. Lisa Osborne is a mucosal immunologist fascinated by the complex interactions between the biodiverse collection of microbes that colonize the gut and the host they reside in. After earning a PhD focused on cytokine regulation of T cell development and function, she completed postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania where she established mouse models to interrogate how viral, bacterial and eukaryotic members of the ‘multibiome’ influence immune function. When she was recruited to UBC in 2015, she was named a Canada Research Chair in Host-Microbiome Interactions. The Osborne lab now studies polymicrobial interactions in the context of protective antiviral immunity and autoimmunity, particularly mouse models of type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.
Dr. Elena Verdù
Dr. Elena Verdù has a longstanding interest in the microbial commensal influence on chronic inflammatory disorders. After completing her MD studies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she trained in clinical research on Helicobacter pylori infection and chronic gastritis at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. This was followed by a PhD at the Institute of Microbiology and Gnotobiology of the Czech Academy of Science on the effect of commensal bacterial antigens in animal models of inflammatory bowel disease and celiac disease. As a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University, Dr. Verdù focused on beneficial (probiotic) bacteria and their effect on gut function and inflammation. As a faculty member at McMaster University, she developed a program to decipher the roles that microbial and dietary factors play in modulating immune responses in celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease. She uses relevant in vitro and mouse models that are humanized from immune and microbiota perspective, as well as translational approaches to validate discoveries in well characterized patient cohorts. Dr. Verdù’s long-term goal is to develop novel microbial therapeutics to prevent or treat these conditions. Thus, her research program addresses unmet needs in the treatment of chronic intestinal inflammatory conditions, with the potential to deliver safe therapies targeting the dietary and microbial drivers of inflammation.
Dr. Dana Philpott
Dr. Dana Philpott is a Professor in the Department of Immunology and oversees the gnotobiotic mouse facility within the Department of Comparative Medicine at the University of Toronto. Her research employs animal models of inflammatory bowel disease and considers how innate immunity and the microbiome shape immune homeostasis within the intestine.
Dr. Braedon McDonald
Braedon McDonald, MD, PhD, FRCPC (Int Med), FRCPC (Crit Care) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Critical Care Medicine and Department of Medicine at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine. Dr. McDonald is a clinician-scientist with the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases, and leads a translational and basic science research program focused on immunology and microbiology/microbiome of infectious diseases and critical illness. Dr. McDonald is co-lead of the IMPACTT Education & Mentorship Platform.
Dr. Jen Gommerman
Dr. Jen Gommerman received her PhD (Immunology) at the University of Toronto in 1998. She went on to do a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School studying the complement pathway and then joined Biogen Inc. as a Staff Scientist in 2000. During her tenure at Biogen, she became interested in B cells, Multiple Sclerosis, and the TNF superfamily of molecules. After 3 years in Industry, she returned to Academia as an Assistant Professor (Immunology) at the University of Toronto in 2003. In 2015 was promoted to full Professor, and in 2020 was awarded a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Tissue-Specific Immunity. Dr. Gommerman’s basic research continues to focus on how members of the TNF superfamily of molecules regulate immunity and autoimmunity. Her team has uncovered a novel gut-brain axis that regulates neuroinflammation. With respect to translational work, Dr. Gommerman has been examining the role of B lymphocytes in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients and in animal models of MS. More recently, she has been studying the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 in saliva samples from patients with COVID-19.
Dr. Morgan Langille
Dr. Morgan Langille is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is a Canada Research Chair in Human Microbiomics and has published 70 peer reviewed publications that have been cited over 16,000 times. He is also the founder and Director of the Integrated Microbiome Resource (IMR), which has provided sequencing and bioinformatics support for over 470 clients in 36 countries by sequencing over 160,000 samples. Dr. Langille’s research program focuses on understanding the human microbiome and its role in human health using a variety of sequencing and bioinformatic approaches. This research ranges from the creation of novel bioinformatic approaches, analyzing the best practices in microbiome research, and the application of these robust approaches in several human disease and model organism studies. These studies have revealed associations between the microbiome and aging, exercise, Crohn’s disease, and cancer, by profiling diverse body sites including stool, saliva, blood, and tumour biopsies.
Dr. Amy Willis
Dr. Amy Willis (she/her) is the Principal Investigator of the Statistical Diversity Lab and a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington. Dr. Willis and the StatDivLab develop tools for the analysis of microbiome and biodiversity data. Dr. Willis is passionate about reproducible science, meaningful data analysis, ecosystem and host health, and collaborating with scientists who share these values. Dr. Willis is the recipient of a NIH Outstanding Investigator Award and a University of Washington Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award.
Dr. Heather Armstrong
Dr. Heather Armstrong is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair at the University of Manitoba. She completed her MSc at the University of Alberta (2012 Cell Biology; Dr. Paul LaPointe), her PhD-MED at the University of Adelaide (2016 Medicine; Dr. Lisa Butler), and her Mitacs-Weston Family Foundation and CIHR-funded Fellowship at the University of Alberta (2021 Pediatrics; Dr Eytan Wine). Her research is focused on understanding the connections between fermentable dietary factors (fibers and proteins), microbiome, chronic inflammatory diseases, and progression to cancer. Her research is funded by UManitoba, CRC, Weston Family Foundation, and Manitoba Medical Services Foundation, with multiple funded opportunities available for staff and trainees.
Dr. Kyle Flannigan
Dr. Kyle Flannigan received his PhD from McMaster University under the guidance of Dr. John Wallace, examining how gaseous mediators influence inflammation. Dr. Flannigan then spent time as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Timothy Denning’s lab at Georgia State University, where he investigated how the microbiome shapes mucosal immunity and how different immune cells communicate with each other in the context of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Dr. Flannigan is currently a postdoctoral research associate studying host-microbiota interactions in the lab of Dr. Simon Hirota at the University of Calgary. He is interested in how the microbiota instructs immune responses to influence disease pathogenesis and therapeutic outcomes.
Dr. Genelle Healey
Dr. Genelle Healey undertook her PhD in Nutritional Science at Massey University in New Zealand. The aim of her PhD research was to determine what influence habitual dietary fibre intake has on gut microbiota response to a prebiotic (fibre) intervention. Prior to commencing her PhD, Dr. Healey worked as a New Zealand Registered Dietitian caring for patients with various diseases including gastrointestinal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), renal disease, and diabetes. In 2017, she moved to Vancouver to start a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Bruce Vallance and Dr. Kevan Jacobson at the University of British Columbia. The focus of her research is to better understand the impact that nutrition, particularly fibre, has on the gut microbiome and disease outcomes for patients with IBD. During her postdoctoral fellowship she has utilized models of IBD to investigate the therapeutic potential of novel nutritional interventions with the hope that these therapies can one day be used to positively impact the health and wellbeing of patients with IBD. Some of Dr. Healey’s future research aspirations include investigating the effect diet has in modulating the mycobiome (fungi) and virome (viruses), as most research only focuses on bacterial changes. She also plans to undertake future research to better understand the factors involved in inter-individual responses to dietary interventions and immunotherapy in IBD patients.
Dr. Leyuan Li
Dr. Leyuan Li is a research associate and a former postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Daniel Figeys’ lab at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine of the University of Ottawa. Dr. Li is also a mentee of the IMPACTT Mentorship Program paired with her mentor Dr. Marie-Claire Arrieta from the University of Calgary. Her PhD studies at Beihang University in China focused on developing the microbial and animal units in a bioregenerative life-support ecosystem named Lunar Palace for future space habitation. After obtaining her PhD in 2016, with continued interest in microbes and their ecosystems, Dr. Li joined Dr. Daniel Figeys’ lab to use metaproteomics as the main analysis tool to study the functionality and ecology of the human gut microbiome. Dr. Li and her fellow scientists developed RapidAIM, which includes a scalable in vitro model that maintains both taxonomic and functional profiles of the gut microbiome, and a high-throughput metaproteomics workflow for rapid and robust analysis of microbial functional responses to drug treatments. More recently, collaborating with Dr. Yangyu Liu from Harvard Medical School, Dr. Li also developed a computational approach to analyzing the protein-level functional redundancy in the gut microbiomes based on metaproteomics data.
