Dr. Rob Knight Knight received his PhD from Princeton University in 2001 and performed postdoctoral work at the University of Colorado. He has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Colorado since 2004, and has additional appointments in the Department of Computer Science and also with the Computational Biosciences Program at the Anschutz Medical Campus. In 2009 he became one of 50 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientists. His laboratory develops new tools for high-throughput studies of microbial communities, including the UniFrac and QIIME software packages, and has made substantial contributions to barcoded sequencing on the 454 and Illumina platforms. Together with a wide range of collaborators, his laboratory is currently studying how the human microbiome is assembled in different people, and how it varies in different conditions such as obesity, malnutrition and Crohn’s disease.

Dr. Peterson received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado’s Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and did her postdoctoral research at Yale University. Dr. Peterson is recognized as a dedicated leader of the Human Genome Project, on which she has served in the capacity of Program Director since the project’s inception. Dr. Peterson came to National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NHGRI) in 1989 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, where she served as a Program Director for the Genetics Program. At NHGRI she has served as Leader of the Large-Scale Sequencing Program and since 2001, as an Associate Director of the Division of Extramural Research of NHGRI. In this role, Dr. Peterson plays an important role in the administration of NHGRI extramural activities and coordinates the Human Microbiome Project for NIH, and works on The Cancer Genome Atlas project and The Knockout Mouse Project. Dr. Peterson won the US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Award in 2001 for her contributions to the Human Genome Project and again in 2005 for her involvement in The International HapMap Project.

David joined Unilever in 1995, working in the Deodorants Category, until he moved over to the newly formed Bioscience Group in 2002. He obtained his first degree in Microbiology from Leeds University and then furthered his interests in microbial physiology with a PhD at Leeds concerned with toxic shock syndrome toxin regulation in Staphylococcus aureus. Following PhD studies and a one year project on the hairless rat as an animal model for acne, David moved to Stockholm and the Karolinska Institute on a 2 year Royal Society Fellowship to look at molecular aspects of toxin regulation in staphyloccci. After an 18 month stint as a lecturer in Medical Microbiology at Liverpool University, David joined Unilever. In 2009, David was appointed Discover Platform Manager for Microbiology, Virology & Hygiene, a global role within Unilever. He is the project leader for a Microbiomics Reasearch Project. David’s research interests remain the microbial physiology and ecology of cutaneous microorganisms.

Dr. Iris Brune is a biologist, and was educated at Bielefeld University. She received her PhD in molecular genetics of bacteria at the Faculty for Biology at Bielefeld University in 2006; the focus of her PhD studies was the identification and classification of transcriptional regulators and the regulation of iron response in Corynebacterium glutamicum. Afterwards she started working at the Institute for Genome Research and Systems Biology at the Center for Biotechnology (CeBiTec). Her focus shifted to Corynebacterium jeikeium, mainly focussing on transcriptomic examinations using oligonucleotide microarrays. She is now heading the work group "Transcriptomics of skin bacteria”. Since 2009 she coordinates the Bielefeld branch of the CLIB-Graduate Cluster Industrial Biotechnology, a PhD programme located in Dortmund, Düsseldorf and Bielefeld that aims to bring PhD students in contact with European industry.

Dr. Yuli song received her Ph.D. in microbiology from Gifu University School of medicine, Japan (2000) and her M.S. in immunology from China Medical University, China (1994). She joined Procter & Gamble in 2006 and is currently a Senior Scientist in Oral Care. Her research focus is on the use of probiotics to improve oral health. Prior to joining P&G, Dr. Song worked at Wadsworth anaerobic Bacteriology Laboratory Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA.

Prof Pettersson received his PhD, MD from Umeå University in Sweden in 1986. He did his post doctorial work at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK (1987-1990). In 1991 he was recruited to Karolinska Institutet (KI) Sweden as a faculty member and junior investigator. Since 2001 he holds a strategic professorship in the field of host-microbe interactions at KI. His research aims to understand how normal commensal flora modulate host physiology and thus body function in health and in disease. Given the complexity and interdisplinary approach to this type of research, he has formed a network of a broad range of different scientists that works closely with him and his team. He is also director for the core facility for germ free research at KI. Since 2004 he holds an adjunct professor at the Genome Institute of Singapore. In 2008 he was appointed as senior Principal Investigator at the National Cancer Centre (NCC) in Singapore. Together with Professor Tak Mak from Canada, they have established a laboratory of Inflammation Research in Singapore. Finally, since 2010 Prof. Pettersson co-ordinates a large scale EU funded research program, TORNADO aiming to understand how diet, microbes, nutrition and host signaling pathways tune and regulate innate and adaptive immune function.

Corinne Reymermier originates from France is a biochemist, graduated in medical biology engineering. She started working on skin in 1996 at the research department in COLETICA and had developed the RT-PCR screening laboratory. Then, she becames a project leader and develop new cosmetic ingredients targeting gene expression modulation in aged skin. She has been working on anti-microbial ingredients able to improve human beta-defensin production by epidermis.

Wilfrid Ghys is a qualified doctor in Pharmacy, having obtained his diploma from the Clermont-Ferrand School of Pharmacy Science (France) in 1998. After his specialization (Msc) in Quality Control from the Paris XI School of Pharmacy Science (France), he joined the quality control department of Beaufour-Ipsen (Dreux, France) in 1999. In 2000 he became head of the Laboratory Quality Control department in Lyocentre (Aurillac, France). For fifty years, Lyocentre has been one of the few companies producing a medicine containing a probiotic (lactobacillus) with a gastroenterological indication for the treatment of diarrhea. In the seventies, Sanofi and Lyocentre developed a vaginal capsule containing Lyocentre’s strain of lactobacillus and hormones. Since 2007, Wilfrid Ghys has also been in charge of a probiotics development unit as well as involved in different preclinical studies and clinical trials.