Secrétaire Perpétuel de l’Académie des Sciences and Emeritus Professor at the Pasteur Institute (France)

Pascale Cossart is a pioneering microbiologist who has significantly advanced the understanding of bacterial pathogenesis. Her research on Listeria monocytogenes has elucidated how bacteria invade, survive, and spread within host cells, utilising strategies like posttranslational and epigenetic modifications. She has influenced global infectious disease research and contributed extensively to infection biology, cell biology, and microbiology. She has received numerous prestigious awards such as the Robert Koch Prize, Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine and the Balzan Prize. She is a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, Foreign Member of the British Royal Society and of the National Academy of Medicine, USA.

Professor of Bioengineering and Microbiology and Immunology and (by courtesy) Biochemistry Director, Biophysics Program, Stanford University (USA)

KC Huang is a biophysicist and microbiologist, currently serving as a professor at Stanford University. His research explores the physical principles underlying cellular organisation and dynamics, with a particular focus on bacterial cell biology. Renowned for his interdisciplinary approach, he has made significant contributions to understanding bacterial shape, growth, and division. His innovative work has been recognised with numerous awards and honours and include the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award, Humboldt Foundation in 2014 and an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, 2009.

Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology, Caltech (USA)

Dianne Newman is a molecular microbiologist and a professor at the California Institute of Technology, where she holds appointments in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering and the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. Her research focuses on the co-evolution of microorganisms and their environments. She has received numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology for her “discovery of microbial mechanisms underlying geologic processes.”

Professor University of Vienna (Austria)

Martin Polz is a Professor of Microbial Ecology at the University of Vienna where he joined the faculty in 2020. Prior, he was a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-director of the Microbiology Graduate Program. His scientific approach -which combines field work, quantitative molecular approaches, genomics, physiology and modelling- has allowed him to make key contributions to our understanding of the structure-function relationships within microbial communities. He has received several notable awards that recognise his contributions to the field of microbial ecology including election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and receipt of the Eli Lilly Research Award, of the American Society of Microbiology.

Full Professor and Principal Investigator at the CIBIO Department of the University of Trento and Principal Investigator at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan (Italy)

Nicola Segata is a Professor and Principal Investigator at the Laboratory of Computational Metagenomics at the Department CIBIO at the University of Trento and a Principal Investigator at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy. Segata’s methodological contributions in metagenomics analysis tools and pipelines, as well as his research unveiling links between the microbiome and various diseases, have significantly advanced the field of microbiology and microbiome research. He has received numerous awards, including the H.G. Goldman Award and Jürgen Manchot Research Professorship for Experimental Infection Medicine from Heinrich-Heine-University of Düsseldorf.

Full professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Molecular Genetics (Israel)

Rotem Sorek is a full professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Molecular Genetics. He completed his Ph.D. in Human Genetics at Tel Aviv University and has held various research positions, including a postdoctoral fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Sorek’s lab research focuses on microbial immunology, specifically the immune systems of bacteria. He has received numerous awards, such as the Rothschild Prize and the HFSP Nakasone Award, and is a member of several prestigious scientific academies.

Director & Full Professor, Institute of Molecular Infection Biology Würzburg and founding director of the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (Germany)

Prof. Jörg Vogel is the founding director of the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) and director of the Institute of Molecular Infection Biology (IMIB) at the University of Würzburg. Among his notable achievements, he pioneered the utilisation of high-throughput RNA sequencing to analyse bacterial transcriptomes, made key contributions to the understanding of CRISPR RNA maturation and the key importance of RNA in the  interactions between pathogenic bacteria and their hosts. He has received prestigious awards, including an EMBO membership for his extraordinary research and the Leibniz prize in recognition of his contributions for the field of Microbiology. 

Principal Investigator at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (Portugal)

Karina Xavier is a Principal Investigator at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in Portugal and her group’s research primarily focuses on inter-species cell-cell communication in bacteria and its impact on the host. Through multiple European and National funded grants, she has established an independent research group and discovered novel mechanisms in quorum sensing signal transduction networks and metabolism. In recognition of her groundbreaking work, she received the HHMI International Early Career Award in 2012. Additionally, she was elected to the European Academy for Microbiology in 2019, became an EMBO member in 2021, and joined the American Academy for Microbiology in 2022.