Margaret McFall-Ngai – Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, US
Margaret McFall-Ngai is the Director of the Division of Biosphere Science and Engineering Research at Carnegie Institution for Science. Her research focuses on understanding how animals respond to interactions with beneficial microbes, using a squid and its luminescent, beneficial bacteria as a model. She has been a main proponent and advocate of a new perspective in biology placing interaction with microbes at the center stage of the biology of animals, including humans.
Martin Blaser – Rutgers University, New Brunswick, US
Martin Blaser is Chair of the Human Microbiome and Director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University. His current research interest focuses on the role of the human microbiome on early life development, the impact of the use of antibiotics in its composition, and its effect on health and disease. Martin Blaser is the author of the book “Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues”, for the general public.
Michael Zimmermann – EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany
Michael Zimmermann is a Group Leader at European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). He is interested in understanding how the microbiota, with its genetic and functional diversity, chemically alters its environment. By using systematic approaches, he studies how pharmacological drugs affect and are modified by the microbiota.