Full Professor of Pediatric, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy.
Responsible for the Project First 1000 days Italian Minister of University.
Member of the IPA’s Program Area Working Group on Food Safety.
Secretary of Espghan Working Group on Gut Microbiota.
President of World Scientific Association of Prebiotic Probiotic in Pediatric
University of Glasgow, UK
Christine Edwards is Professor of Nutritional Physiology at the University of Glasgow. She gained her BSc (Biochemistry & Physiology) and PhD (modelling the human colonic microbiome) from the University of Sheffield and is a registered nutritionist with the Association for Nutrition (AfN). Her research explores interactions between food, the gut and its microbiome including the impact of dietary fibre, polyphenols and their resultant bioactives on health and gut disease. Her research has been funded by EU (co-ordinator of two previous projects on infant microbiota), MRC, BBSRC and industrial sponsors. She is the current Editor in Chief of Nutrition Research Reviews.
University of Bologna, Italy
Silvia Turroni is Associate Professor in Chemistry and Biotechnology of Fermentation, at the Unit of Microbiome Science and Biotechnology, Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna (Bologna, Italy). She has over 15 years of experience in the compositional and functional profiling of the human microbiome and the exploration of its impact on health. She has strong expertise in next-generation sequencing technologies, including 16S rRNA gene sequencing and omics approaches, i.e., metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and, more recently, culturomics, as well as in microbiome-host interaction studies in ex vivo models. Her research activity is documented by >200 publications in international peer-reviewed journals and >140 participations in national and international congresses (>60 as invited speaker).
University of Antwerp, Belgium
Sarah Lebeer is a research professor (ZAP BOF) at the Department of Bioscience Engineering of the University of Antwerp. She is heading the Laboratory for Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology of the ENdEMIC research group. The major research topics within this lab are all driven by a passion for beneficial bacteria and microbiome research (www.lebeerlab.com). Fundamental, frontier research is combined with applied research oriented towards human and animal health, fermented foods and bioremediation. Sarah & her team study host-microbe interaction mechanisms in order to develop microbiological alternatives for antibiotics, such as probiotics and live biotherapeutic products. As such, Sarah has played a fundamental role during the start-up of YUN, a European biotech company that develops probiotherapy for the skin (www.yun.be). In 2017, Sarah won the European LABIP (Industrial Platform Lactic acid bacteria) award for mid-career scientists with “Outstanding Excellence in Lactic Acid Bacteria Research with an Industrial Relevance”. Since 2017, Sarah was also elected as academic board member of the International Scientific Association on Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) (www.isappscience.org). In 2020, Sarah and her team have launched a new citizen science project on women’s health and the vaginal microbe (isala.be/en), thanks to funding via an ERC Starting grant Lacto-Be. This project has been honoured with a Science Communication Award by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts and the Grand EY prize for citizen-science
Amsterdam University Medical Center, The Netherlands
Professor Max Nieuwdorp (1977) studied Medicine at Utrecht University and received his Ph.D. in diabetes at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam (AMC-UvA; under supervision of Professor John Kastelein). After a residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Endocrinology at the AMC-UvA he performed a postdoctoral fellowship on glycobiology at University of California, San Diego in the department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine under Professor Jeff Esko. Professor Nieuwdorp is currently chair of the AmsterdamUMC Diabetes Center as well as chair of (Experimental) Vascular Medicine department; 36 Ph.D. students have already defended their thesis under his stewardship, currently he has 30 Ph.D. students, 6 postdoctoral fellows as well as 4 bioinformaticians in his group. His research focuses on translational research aimed at dissecting the causal role of (small) intestinal bacterial strains in development of type 1/type 2 diabetes mellitus, NAFLD-NASH and cardiometabolic disease with a special interest in the gut-brain axis. Prof Nieuwdorp has published > 370 peer reviewed articles including papers in Nature Medicine, Science, Cell Host Microbes, NEJM, Cell Metabolism, Gut and Gastroenterology. He also recently published his book for the laypublic entitled “ We are our hormones”, which is currently translated in 10 languages including an English version at Simon and Schuster publishers.
Rasboud University Medical Center, The Netherlands
Dr. Alejandro Arias Vásquez, Associate Professor of Translational Neurobiology at Radboudumc, leads the pioneering Bacteria, Brain, and Behaviour (B3) research group. With dual expertise in biology and genetic epidemiology, Dr. Arias Vásquez’s team investigates the gut-brain axis, exploring how gut bacteria influence mental health. Their work uncovers robust associations between bacterial variation and neurobiological outcomes, including brain structure, function, behavior, and neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. The group’s innovative research also seeks nutritional drivers that, through the microbiota gut-brain axis, have the potential to modulate behavior, offering promising avenues for mental health interventions.
University College Cork, Ireland
Yvonne Nolan is Professor in Neuroscience, a Science Foundation Ireland Investigator and an Investigator in APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork (UCC). She leads a research team investigating the impact of inflammation and lifestyle influences such as exercise, stress and diet on brain plasticity, gut health, mental health and memory, especially during adolescence, middle and older age. She is a cell, animal model and translational neuroscientist.
Yvonne is Vice Head of Graduate Studies in Medicine and Health at UCC, where she has strategic oversight of education for doctoral degrees in the health sciences.
Yvonne graduated from NUI, Galway with a BSc in Biochemistry and a PhD in Neuropharmacology. She was a visiting fellow at McGill University Montreal, Canada and held postdoctoral positions in Trinity College, Dublin before joining UCC as academic staff.
Yakult Honsha European Research Center for Microbiology, Belgium
Kazunori Suda, MSc, is a Senior Researcher of Yakult Honsha European Research Center for Microbiology VOF (YHER), Belgium. He obtained Bachelor degree in Division of Biological Science at the Nagoya University, Japan and Master in Master’s Program in Medical Sciences at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. He started working at Yakult Central Institute in 2006, where he studied the effects of probiotics on intestinal epithelial cells and on stress-related gastrointestinal dysfunctions. Subsequently, his major research interest has focused on the interaction between microbiome and neuroendocrine systems. Since 2023, he is working at YHER.
