Having IMPACTT 4:
Advancing Microbiome Research
June 3-5, 2024
Speaker Profiles
Keynote Speaker
John F. Cryan, PhD
University College Cork, Ireland
Professor John F. Cryan is Vice President for Research & Innovation at University College Cork, Ireland, and a Principal Investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons) and PhD from the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was a visiting fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, and The Scripps Research Institute, California. He also served as Behavioural Pharmacology Lab Head at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Basel, Switzerland.
Prof. Cryan’s research focuses on the brain-gut-microbiome interaction and its implications for stress, psychiatric disorders, and immune-related conditions across the lifespan. He has co-authored over 650 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and has a H-index of 152. He holds editorial roles in Neuropharmacology, Neurobiology of Stress, and several other journals. He is a co-author of the bestselling book “The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection” (National Geographic Press, 2017).
He has received numerous accolades, including UCC Researcher (2012) and Research Communicator (2017) of the Year: the University of Utrecht Award for Excellence in Pharmaceutical Research (2013); recognized as a highly cited researcher (2014 – Thomson Reuters; Clarivate Analytics 2017-2020); elected as a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (2017); honoured with a Research Mentor Award from the American Gastroenterology Association (2017) and the Tom Connor Distinguished Scientist Award (Neuroscience Ireland – 2017); presented with an honorary degree from the University of Antwerp, Belgium (2018); was a TEDMED speaker (2014); served as the Past-President of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society.
Plenary Speakers
Jayne Danska, PhD
Hospital for Sick Children | University of Toronto, Canada
Dr. Jayne Danska is a Senior Scientist in the Genetics and Genome Biology Program and Associate Chief in the Faculty of Development and Diversity at the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, as well as a Professor in the Departments of Immunology and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on 1) creating a comprehensive understanding of genetic and microbiome-mediated control of autoimmune disease, with a focus on type 1 diabetes, 2) understanding how cancer cells subvert the innate immune surveillance and 3) using this knowledge to reduce the burden of autoimmunity and cancer in children and young adults. To this end, her lab developed a platform to investigate human immune responses to gut microbes, testing the hypothesis that anti-commensal antibody (ACAb) responses can reveal how host genotype, gut microbes and the systemic immune system interact to regulate islet autoimmunity. Her work also focuses on best practices in inclusive research from genomics to health equity implementation with multiple academic, NGO and government partners.
Oliver Harrison, DPhil
Benaroya Research Institute | University of Washington, USA
Dr. Oliver Harrison is an Assistant Member at the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason, and an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Department of Immunology. Work in his laboratory investigates how the immune system governs host-microbe interactions in health and disease. His team’s research focus is on the role of commensal microbes (our resident bacteria, fungi and viruses) in the development, education and function of the host immune system, and in turn, how immune responses to these microbes promote tissue homeostasis and repair. He seeks to understand how, when dysregulated, these responses may lead to chronic inflammatory disorders, such as Atopic Dermatitis (AD) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).
Paul Kubes, PhD
University of Calgary, Canada
Dr. Paul Kubes is a Professor at the University of Calgary, Cumming School of Medicine and is the Founding Director of the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases. He has been awarded a Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Immunophysiology and Immunotherapy.
Dr. Kubes has received numerous awards including the CIHR Investigator of the Year in 2011 for his basic science work on how the brain affects immunity. He has also received the Alberta Science and Technology Award and the Henry Friesen Award. Dr. Kubes has published basic science work in Cell, Science and the Nature in the last 5 years and also has publications in both clinical journals including Lancet and more translational journals (JCI). His latest work has uncovered a key role for the environment providing cues for macrophage identity. He has done work for CIHR having been part of numerous review committees a member of CIHR Governing Council and was chair of the college chairs. He is on the advisory board of Science and the editorial board of JCI and JEM and co-chaired the Gairdner Research Committee.
Mercedes Gomez de Agüero, PhD
University of Würzburg, Germany
Dr. Mercedes Gomez de Agüero is Group Leader at the Institute of Systems Immunology (Max Planck Research Group, University of Würzburg) since 2019. Mercedes Gomez de Agüero studied Biology in Madrid (Spain) and Lyon (France) and obtained her PhD in Immunology in Lyon (France) in 2011. During her post-doctorate under the supervision of Prof. Macpherson and Prof. McCoy, Mercedes acquired in-depth knowledge in gnotobiotic research. As an independent researcher, Mercedes is dedicated to the study of host-microbial interactions, with a particular focus on early life, barrier tissue development and function. Her major findings have redefined the mechanisms of immune tolerance to environmental challenges. On the one hand, Mercedes redefined the contribution of skin and intestinal immune sentinels, dendritic cells, to cutaneous and intestinal immune tolerance. On the other hand, Mercedes was the first to show that metabolites produced by the maternal microbiota have a major impact on the development of the tissue barrier of the embryo, optimising its function and its resistance to infection after birth.
Sam Light, PhD
University of Chicago, USA
Dr. Sam Light is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Duchossois Family Institute at the University of Chicago. He received a PhD in biochemistry from Northwestern University and postdoctoral training in bacterial pathogenesis at the University of California, Berkeley. His research primarily focuses on the relationship between microbial ecology, metabolism, and health in the human gut.
Carolina Tropini, PhD
University of British Columbia, Canada
Dr. Carolina Tropini is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the School of Biomedical Engineering, and a Canada Tier 2 Research Chair in Quantitative Microbiota Biology for Health Applications. In 2020 she was nominated a Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator, and she was the first Canadian to be awarded the Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D Scholar in the field of Engineering. She is the inaugural Alan Bernstein Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Fellow in the Humans & the Microbiome Program and a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar. In 2019, she was nominated as a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar.
The Tropini lab is investigating how a disrupted physical environment due to altered nutrition or concurrent with intestinal diseases affects the microbiota and host at a multi-scale level. They are a cross-disciplinary group that incorporates techniques from microbiology, bioengineering and biophysics to create highly parallel assays and study how bacteria and microbial communities function, with the goal of translating the knowledge gained to improve human health.
Dr. Tropini conducted her Ph.D. in Biophysics at Stanford University. Her studies in the laboratory of Dr. KC Huang combined computational and experimental techniques to investigate bacterial mechanics and morphogenesis. In 2014 she received the James S. McDonnell Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, and she joined the laboratory of Dr. Justin Sonnenburg at Stanford. During her post-doc, Dr. Tropini applied her background in biophysics to study the impact of physical perturbations on host-associated microbial communities living in the gut.
Romina Goldszmid, PhD
National Institutes of Health, USA
Dr. Goldszmid’s research is at the intersection of tumor immunology, myeloid cell biology, and immunity to infections. She received her Ph.D from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, part of which was performed as a visiting student in the laboratory of Dr. Ralph Steinman at the Rockefeller University, working on dendritic cell-based vaccines for cancer immunotherapy. She then trained in infectious diseases immunology as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Alan Sher at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH. After completing her postdoctoral training, Dr. Goldszmid returned to tumor immunology joining Dr. Giorgio Trinchieri’s group as a Staff Scientist at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where she led pioneering work on the role of the gut microbiota in cancer therapy. In 2015, she was appointed Earl Stadtman Investigator and head of the Inflammatory Cell Dynamics Section in the Laboratory of Integrative Cancer Immunology at NCI. Current work in her laboratory aims to dissect the myeloid cell landscape within tumors, determine their contribution to therapy efficacy, and unravel the mechanisms by which microbiota as well as cues from the tissue’s homeostatic processes regulate their function. Dr. Goldszmid is recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), NCI Director’s Innovation Award, NCI Director’s Award for Basic Biological Science, NCI CMAP Exceptional Mentor Award, among others.
Emma Allen-Vercoe, PhD
University of Guelph, Canada
Dr. Allen-Vercoe is a Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Gut Microbial Function and Host Interactions at the University of Guelph, Ontario. Her independent research career has always been focused on culture of microbes and microbiomes, and to this end, she developed the ‘Robogut’, a specialist fermenter system that mimics the conditions of the human colon to allow gut microbes to grow and function as ecosystems. The Robogut is a central part of the specialist anaerobic culture facility that Dr. Allen-Vercoe has developed and continually improved over the years, with support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario government. Most recently, funding has been awarded to support the creation of MiPAC, a new microbiome culture centre at Guelph which will operate, in part, as a microbial culture and preservation service platform to assist microbiome researchers. Dr. Allen-Vercoe’s current research portfolio covers many topics, including culture and characterization of microbes from hunter-gatherer societies, cultivation and study of fastidious ‘oncomicrobes’ from patients with oral and colorectal cancer, creation of defined microbial ecosystems to model states of disease and health in humans and animals, and investigation of honeybee and wild pollinator gut microbiomes and their abilities to withstand agricultural stressors.
Irah King, PhD
McGill University, Canada
Dr. Irah King completed his PhD at the University of Rochester where he investigated mechanisms of myeloid cell differentiation in the context of neuroimmunological disease. He then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the Trudeau Institute in New York studying protective immunity to intestinal helminth infection. He is currently a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at McGill University, where he leads a research program in mucosal immunology focusing on microbiota-immune cell networks that support intestinal health during infection. In 2020, Dr. King established the McGill Centre for Microbiome Research and directs the Gnotobiotic Animal Research Platform at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. He also serves as Theme Leader of Microbiome Research for the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity (MI4), a faculty-wide effort to raise funds dedicated to translational research for the prevention, cure, and elimination of major infectious and immune threats.
Meriem Messaoudene, PhD
Université de Montréal, Canada
Dr. Meriem Messaoudene is specialized in immuno-oncology and microbiome research. She did her basic training at Université Pierre et Marie Curie and Institut Pasteur (Paris, France). After a PhD at Université Paris XI on the role of NK cells in human metastatic melanoma, she started a post-doctoral study in Pr. Laurence Zitvogel’s lab (Institut Gustave Roussy, France). She then joined Dr. Bertrand Routy at CRCHUM (Montréal, Canada), focusing on microbiota and cancer with the challenge to develop new therapeutic strategies to safely increase immune checkpoint inhibitors responses through manipulations of the microbiota. Since 2023, she is the scientific director of the CHUM microbiome center.
William Hsiao, PhD
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Dr. William Hsiao is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at Simon Fraser University. Prior to joining FHS, Dr. Hsiao was the chief bioinformatician and a senior scientist at the BC Centre for Disease Control Public Health Laboratory and a clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Hsiao obtained his PhD at Simon Fraser University followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Genome Sciences at University of Maryland School of Medicine. With experience conducting and applying genomics and data science research both in academia and in government laboratories (public health and animal health), Dr. Hsiao brings a special perspective on integrating basic and applied research to improve our public health system.
IMPACTT Mentee Speakers
Aline Ignacio, PhD
University of Calgary, Canada
Dr. Aline Ignacio is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary, Canada in Dr. Kathy McCoy’s lab. Her research is focused on how exposure to commensal microbes impacts immune cell functions, from early life into adulthood. Aline is originally from São Paulo where she obtained her Master’s in Microbiology and PhD in Immunology at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. Outside her research, she is also passionate about science education and outreach, and is a member of the Snyder Institute Trainee Committee and the Yale-Proxima Mentorship Program.
Charlène Roussel, PhD
University of Ottawa, Canada
Dr. Charlène Roussel is a newly appointed Assistant Professor within the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Ottawa. She completed a 5-year postdoctoral research at Laval University analysing multi-omics data to understand the effect of dietary or prebiotic-like molecules on gut microbial communities. She is now establishing a research lab to integrate in vivo and ex vivo techniques to replicate critical microbial ecosystems and understand the unique characteristics of individual gut microbiota. She is particularly passionate about advancing women’s health research, especially where it intersects with the gut microbiota and various gynecological or urological disorders.
Akinola Alafiatayo, PhD
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Dr. Akinola A. Alafiatayo (he/him) is a MITAC-Atlantic Cancer Consortium (ACC) Postdoctoral Fellow under the tutelage of Dr. Sevtap Savas and Dr. Touati Benoukraf at the Division of Biomedical Science (Genetics) Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN). His current research focuses on the multi-omics integration of genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics and microbiome data to study their interplays in familial and sporadic colorectal cancer to identify new diagnostic, therapeutic and prognostic biomarkers in precision medicine. Additionally, he holds a Janeway foundation grant as a PI to study the microbiome and metatranscriptomics of breastfed and non-breastfed children with autism in Newfoundland. At MUN, he developed Oxford Nanopore microbiome sequencing and analysis protocols for stool and saliva samples for children with autism, and experimental and computational methods of identifying colon bacteria from colorectal tissues and feces for the pilot phase of the Terry Fox – Atlantic Cancer Consortium Project.
Karen Lithgow, PhD
University of Calgary, Canada
Dr. Karen Lithgow is a Banting-funded postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Laura Sycuro at the University of Calgary. Dr. Lithgow’s research investigates vaginal microbiome impacts on women’s sexual and reproductive health with a focus on how microbial enzymes contribute to vaginal health, sexually transmitted infection and pregnancy complications. Dr. Lithgow obtained her BSc in Immunology & Infection from the University of Alberta and completed her PhD in Biochemistry & Microbiology from the University of Victoria. During her PhD, Dr. Lithgow explored Treponema pallidum molecular pathogenesis and vaccine development for syphilis under the supervision of Dr. Caroline Cameron.
