Editor-in-Chief
Professor M. Andrea Azcarate-Peril - UNC School of Medicine, USA
M. Andrea Azcarate-Peril, Ph. D. is Associate Professor of Medicine, GI Division in the School of Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill. She is also the founding and current Director of the UNC Microbiome Core, which provides research and technical support to investigators interested in addressing the roles of the host-associated microbiota in health and disease.
Dr. Azcarate-Peril is a microbiologist by training and has extensive experience in the characterization of complex microbial populations and functional metagenomics using culture-dependent and culture-independent methods including Next Generation Sequencing. Her research projects have focused on functional genomics of probiotics and gut microbiome modulation by prebiotics for over 20 years, resulting in over 65 peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Azcarate-Peril’s current projects aim to define modulators of the gut microbiome capable of reversing dysbioses induced by age, diet and nutritional behaviors. She is particularly interested in prebiotics and application-directed probiotics to address and prevent gastrointestinal disorders.
Associate Editors
Dr Shai Bel - The Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Shai Bel, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of the Bar-Ilan University in Israel. The Bel research group studies the intricate crosstalk between the microbiota and the intestinal immune system, and how breakdown of this delicate balance leads to development of inflammatory bowel diseases. Specifically, the Bel lab studies (1) the importance of the autophagy process in intestinal homeostasis and inflammation, (2) the molecular function of Paneth and goblet cells, (3) the regulation of the intestinal mucus layer, and (4) mechanisms of colonization resistance by the microbiota.
Dr. Bel completed his Ph.D. at the Bar-Ilan University in 2015, focusing on mechanisms of mucus secretion from colonic goblet cells and how this mucus shapes the get microbiome in a way that protects from onset of colitis. He then went on to do his postdoctoral research with Prof. Lora V Hooper at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in the US. There he discovered how the autophagy machinery is used to secrete antimicrobial proteins from intestinal Paneth cells and how this process is dysfunctional in mice carrying a genetic mutation common in Crohn’s disease patients. In 2018 Dr. Bel went back to Israel to establish his independent research group.
Professor Patricia Conway - University of New South Wales, Australia
Dr Patricia Conway, BSc & MSc (Uni of Qld, Australia), PhD (UNSW Australia), is Visiting Prof at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Adjunct Prof at UNSW Australia. She has successfully combined basic research and translational applications for over 30 years by being affiliated with university for supervision of doctoral students and the basic research while being industry employed or by working closely with industry while being university employed.
Patricia’s research interests are gastrointestinal microbiology, probiotics and prebiotics with particular emphasis on bacterial colonization and function within the gastrointestinal tract. She has focused on mechanisms of bacterial adhesion, pathogen inhibition and immune modulation in animals and humans and the impact of the gut microbiota on health. In particular, health conditions linked to inflammation, infection and metabolic disorders and developing intervention strategies for improving health.
Professor Bhabatosh Das - Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, India
Bhabatosh is a Molecular Microbiologist trained in (i) Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kharagpur (MTech) (ii) Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB), Kolkata (PhD) (iii) Institute of Integrative Biology of the Cell (I2BC), France (Postdoc) and (iv) Osaka University (2017), Japan (Fellow). Currently, he is working as Associate Professor in Translational health Science and Technology Institute, an autonomous institute under the Dept. of Biotechnology, Govt. of India. His major research focus is oriented to understand the (i) composition, diversity and dynamics of human gut microbiome and (ii) role of human gut microbiota in the emergence of antimicrobial resistant bacterial pathogens.
Professor Paul Forsythe - McMaster University, Canada
Dr. Paul Forsythe obtained a PhD in Immunopharmacology at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. He then went on to pursue Post-Doctoral studies at the University of Alberta and McMaster University, Canada. Dr. Forsythe is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, McMaster University and Principal Investigator at the McMaster Brain-Body Institute, and Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health. Dr Forsythe’s research explores neuro-immuno-endocrine interactions in the context of the holobiont, with the goal of identifying mechanisms underlying the influence of gut microbes on the development of diverse pathophysiological responses including allergic disease and mood disorders.
Dr Gisèle LaPointe - University of Guelph, Canada
Gisèle holds the NSERC/Dairy Farmers of Ontario Industrial Research Chair in Dairy Microbiology at the University of Guelph. She has over 20 years of teaching and research experience in food microbiology, biotechnology and food applications of microbial molecular genetics, using systems approaches for studying microbial ecology. Her research aims towards understanding how food components modulate the metabolic activities of microbiota in food and human microbial ecosystems. Her goal is to improve the quality and functionality of food, with a special focus on dairy products, probiotics and the impact of food ingredients on the gut microbiota.
Gisèle is a member of a number of professional associations including CSM, ASM, CIFST and IAFP, and was founding board member and president of the IAFP-affiliated Québec Association for Food Protection. She has been a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Food Microbiology since 1999, contributing to peer review for over 20 journals as well as to the editorial boards of the journals of the American Society for Microbiology, the Society for Applied Microbiology, Plos One and Probiotics and Antimicrobial Proteins.
Professor Gianluca Matteoli - KU Leuven, Belgium
Gianluca Matteoli graduated in Veterinary Medicine (2002) at the University of Naples, Italy. Dr. Matteoli started his PhD studies on a project that addressed the interaction between intestinal pathogens and innate immune system. During his PhD training supported by Marie Curie Training Site fellowship, he spent two years at the Medical Microbiology Institute, University of Tubingen, Germany. During his postdoctoral training, he expanded his knowledge in intestinal immunity by joining the lab of Prof. M. Rescigno at the European Institute of Oncology (Milan, Italy), where he developed an interest in the molecular mechanisms involved in the maintenance of intestinal immune tolerance and their role in preventing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). To further pursue his interest in mucosal immunology, in early 2010 he joined the Translational Research Center for Gastrointestinal Disorders (TARGID), KU Leuven (Belgium) working together with Prof. Guy Boeckxstaens, on the immunomodulatory properties of enteric neurons. As recognition of his scientific achievements from the 1st of October 2014 Dr. Matteoli was appointed as Assistant Professor in Mucosal Immunology at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven. His research has gained international recognition as reflected by several peer review publications in top-journals, invitations to international scientific meetings, participation in expert groups, editorial boards and grant support form national and international founding bodies.
Professor Kristin Verbeke - KU Leuven, Belgium
Kristin Verbeke graduated from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven as a pharmacist. She obtained a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Laboratory of Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry in 1995 and consequently spend a postdoctoral period in developing radioactively labelled compounds. In 2002, she was appointed at the department of gastroenterology of the Medical Faculty of the Leuven University and got involved in the use of stable isotope labelled compounds to evaluate gastrointestinal functions.
Her current research interest specifically addresses the microbial bacterial metabolism in the human colon. Her team has developed several analytical techniques based on mass spectrometry and stable isotope or radioisotope technologies to evaluate several aspects of intestinal metabolism and function in humans (transit time, intestinal permeability, carbohydrate fermentation, protein fermentation, metabolome analysis). By collaboration with other research groups, we have been able to show an aberrant bacterial metabolism in patient groups with endstage renal failure, inflammatory bowel diseases, irritable bowel disorders and alcohol abuse. These collaborations all have resulted in high quality peer-reviewed papers. In addition, she showed the impact of dietary interventions (modulation of macronutrient composition, pre- or probiotic interventions) on the microbial metabolism and its impact on health.
As a PI, she acquired grant support from the university and different funding bodies and successfully completed these projects. Similarly, she supervised several PhD projects that all resulted in the achievement of a PhD degree.
Together with colleague Prof. J. Delcour, she is beneficiary of the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Cereal Sciences and Nutrition (2010-2020).
Her research resulted in over 180 full research papers.
She is highly motivated to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams as bringing researchers together with expertise from different backgrounds is key to the development of new insights and exciting science.
Professor Jun Wang - Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Jun Wang obtained his Dr. rer. nat (2014) at Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, working on the structuring forces of gut microbiome in wild mice model, and later in human populations. Then he worked in KU Leuven Belgium and VIB Belgium with Jeroen Raes, resolving microbiome's correlation with human health using population-level data, and obtained two FWO grants to support during this time. In 2017 he started his own group in Beijing at IM-CAS with prestigious recruitment program of China, and at the same time gained the status of Partner Group of Max-Planck Society of Germany. Currently his work covers the interdisciplinary area of sequencing technology, computational biology and artificial intelligence methods, and works closely with clinics to reveal microbiome's role in many diseases and then explore microbiome-based intervention strategies. As (co-) first author/corresponding author he has published in Nature Genetics (including an cover article in 2016 and the largest international consortium working on microbiome GWAS 2021), Science (as cover article of special issue "Microbiome at work", 2016), Cell Host Microbes, Microbiome (2018 & 2020), PNAS, Nature Communications and Protein Cell (2018 & 2020), among others.
Professor Kevin Whelan - King's College London, UK
Kevin Whelan is the Professor of Dietetics and Head of Department of Nutritional Sciences at King’s College London. His research investigates the interaction between diet and the gut microbiome in health and in gastrointestinal disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. He has published over 200 journal articles on fibre, probiotics, prebiotics, the low FODMAP diet and food additives and their impact on the microbiome in health and disease. Kevin is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, is a Founding Trustee of the Academy of Nutrition Sciences, and a Fellow of the British Dietetic Association.
Editorial Advisory Board Members
Professor Harry Flint - University of Aberdeen, UK
Harry Flint is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Aberdeen (UK). He obtained his BSc and PhD in Genetics from the University of Edinburgh and held appointments at the Universities of Nottingham, the West Indies and Edinburgh before joining the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen in 1985.
Harry’s research focuses on the contribution of commensal and symbiotic micro-organisms inhabiting the mammalian gut to nutrition and health. These investigations have combined molecular approaches with cultural microbiology and dietary interventions to uncover the roles of gut bacteria in the degradation of dietary components, especially resistant starches, and plant cell wall polysaccharides. Another major interest has been to identify anaerobic bacteria, pathways, and genes responsible for the formation of butyrate and propionate, and the utilization of lactate, in the human colon. Theoretical modelling has been used to explore the dynamics of microbial communities and their metabolic outputs.
Harry has published 265 primary papers, reviews, and book chapters along with his recent book “Why Gut Microbes Matter” (in Springer Fascinating Life Sciences, 2020). He has served on the UK ACNFP (Advisory Committee for Novel Foods and Processes) and as a Scientific Governor of the British Nutrition Foundation.
Professor Alfredo Martinez - University of Navarra, Spain
Prof J. Alfredo Martínez holds a PhD in Nutrition being also PharmD and MD. He is co-author or has been involved in several landmark intervention trials such as SEAFOODplus, DIOGENES, NUGENOB, FOOD4ME, PREDIMED, PREVIEW, SWEET, and STOP, whose results and comments have been published in the most relevant medical and scientific journals including NEJM, Lancet; Nature Reviews, BMJ, AJCN, Circulation, etc with more than 26.000 citations (HFactor > 64), being IP in more than 50 national and international projects . Furthermore, Prof J. Alfredo Martínez has supervised more than seventy PhD students and published more than 800 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters in the areas of Obesity and Personalized Nutrition, including precision nutritional omics. He is currently President of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences (IUNS) and has been recipient of several important awards including Hipocrates and Dupont prizes. In addition to be staff at the University of Navarra and IMDEA as well as some Spanish institutions such as University of Basque Country and University of Santiago de Compostela. During his scientific career, Prof J. Alfredo Martínez has enjoyed training or invited stays at Nottingham, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Oxford and King College London. Prof Martinez has been advisor for EU Projects or guest, speaker/ Main keynote lecturer in Important FORUM concerning Precision Nutrition in obesity and cardiometabolic diseases, such as IUNS and ISNN, OMS, FAO, IAEA, NIH. SLAN, FENS,….