Speakers

Rob Knight is the founding Director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation and Professor of Pediatrics, Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering, Computer Science & Engineering and Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute at UC San Diego. He is the Wolfe Family Endowed Chair in Microbiome Research. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2024. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Microbiology. He was honored with the 2019 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for his microbiome research and received the 2017 Massry Prize, often considered a predictor of the Nobel. He is the author of “Follow Your Gut: The Enormous Impact of Tiny Microbes” (Simon & Schuster, 2015), coauthor of “Dirt is Good: The Advantage of Germs for Your Child’s Developing Immune System (St. Martin’s Press, 2017), and written over 900 scientific articles. He spoke at TED in 2014 which is viewed over 2.2 million times. His lab has produced many of the software tools and laboratory techniques that enabled high-throughput microbiome science, including the QIIME pipeline (cited over 50,000 times as of this writing) and UniFrac (cited over 15,000 times including its web interface). He is co-founder of the Earth Microbiome Project, the American Gut Project, and the company Biota, Inc., which uses DNA from microbes in the subsurface to guide oilfield decisions. His work has linked microbes to a range of health conditions including obesity and inflammatory bowel disease, has enhanced our understanding of microbes in environments ranging from the oceans to the tundra, and made high-throughput sequencing techniques accessible to thousands of researchers around the world.

Her lab investigates host/microbiome interactions with a focus on host genetic effects on the gut microbiome and the role of microbial transfers between social partners.

Dr. Konnikova's team focuses on the development of early life immunity particularly at barrier sites such as the GI tract and the maternal-fetal interface with a particular focus on T cell biology. Using multi-omic approaches, the group investigates how mucosal homeostasis is developed and what contributes to pathogenesis of diverse diseases such as sepsis, preterm labor, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), very early onset (VEO) and pediatric IBD. The Konnikova lab is further interested in how the microbiome and the associated metabolome regulate immune development and homeostasis at barrier sites. Her group is also interested in how early life events alter circulating immune cells. To this end, in collaboration with the NOuRISH team they are enrolling infants in a longitudinal study of peripheral blood development.

Sarah Lebeer is a professor of microbiology at the University of Antwerp, where sheleads research on host-microbe interactions with a particular focus on lactobacilli and their potential in promoting human health. Her team integrates genomics, ecology and functional microbiology to explore innovative microbiome‑based applications.

Jonathan Swann is a Professor of Biomolecular Medicine within the School of Human Development and Health in the Faculty of Medicine. He is responsible for leading a metabolomics-based research programme to understand the influence of gene-environment interactions on the mammalian metabolic system and their implications for health and disease. His primary research interests fall under two intersecting research themes:

• Role of the gut microbiota (the collection of microbes residing in the gastrointestinal tract) in the mammalian supra-organism and their influence on host health and disease.
• Impact of early-life events and exposures on human development particularly microbial-host interplay, metabolism, and phenotypic outcomes.