Lwoff Awardee 2025 | France | Institut Pasteur

Hear from Carmen Buchrieser in our podcast

Research Interests: Bacterial pathogenesis, Legionella, Nucleomodulins

Carmen Buchrieser is currently Professor of exceptional class at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. She obtained her PhD from the University of Salzburg, Austria, conducted postdoctoral trainings at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, USA and at the Institut Pasteur, Paris France. In 2006 she was appointed Associate Professor at the Institut Pasteur, and in 2008 director of the Research Unit “Biology of Intracellular Bacteria” at the Institut Pasteur that she is heading since then.

Carmen Buchrieser’s major research interest aims to understand how bacteria cause disease, while answering fundamental biological questions: what are the genetic factors conferring bacterial virulence? how do they evolve? what are the mechanisms used by pathogens that allow subverting host functions? which host functions an intracellular pathogen manipulates to replicate and more generally how do human pathogens emerge? Her team uses Legionella as a model that is unique as these bacteria are environmental bacteria (parasite of protozoa) and human pathogens (replicating in alveolar macrophages). The biology to discover by studying host-Legionella interactions is fascinating as this bacterium is one of the best “cell biologists” or “a hidden eukaryote” that allows us to understand not only bacterial pathogenesis strategies but also to decipher host pathways that need to be subverted by a pathogen to cause disease.

Australia | Monash University

Research Interests: Metabolism, Biochemistry, Medical Microbiology, Microbial Ecology, Biogeochemistry

Keynote Lecture: Microbial oxidation of atmospheric trace gases: from enzymes to ecosystems | The atmosphere provides most of the oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen that we depend on, but until now has been thought to lack sufficient energy to sustain life. Here I will demonstrate that diverse microbes live by harvesting the small amounts of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane from air. Through research focused on the model bacterium Mycobacterium smegmatis, I will explain the physiological role, genetic regulation, and structural basis of this process. Culture-based and culture-independent evidence will be presented that microorganisms from multiple phyla and diverse environments also meet their energy needs through this process. Finally, I will reveal that certain ecosystems are primarily powered by atmospheric energy sources, and show the enzymes involved can be harnessed in biotechnology to produce electricity and ATP from air. These findings redefine the minimal requirements for life and have broad climate, medical, and astrobiological implications.

Professor Chris Greening leads the CLIMB: Climate Microbiology Laboratory, an interdisciplinary team dedicated to using microbiology to understand, mitigate, and adapt to climate change. Following a first-class degree in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry at the University of Oxford (2010), Chris completed a doctorate at the University of Otago (2014) investigating the physiological roles of the hydrogenases in mycobacteria. He then gained postdoctoral experience at CSIRO. In 2016, he was appointed as a group leader in Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences and completed an environmentally-focused ARC DECRA Fellowship. In 2020, he moved to Monash’s Department of Microbiology to take up a medically-focused NHMRC EL2 Fellowship. He has published over 120 publications mostly in top journals and partnered extensively with large-scale intervention programs and diverse industrial organisations. In 2023, he was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Life Scientist of the Year.

Professor Chris Greening is dedicated to using microbiology to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This research includes the roles of microbes in greenhouse gas cycling, ecosystem function and resilience, and infectious disease transmission, and how they respond to a changing world. His research spans work at the molecular scale (e.g. structural biology, genetic manipulation) to the ecosystem scale (e.g. metagenomics, gas fluxes).

Israel & Germany | Weizmann Institute of Science & Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ

Hear from Eran Elinav in our podcast

Research Interests: Host-Microbiome Interactions, Personalized Medicine, Innate Immune Function, Microbiome Dynamics, Impact of Environmental Factors on the Microbiome 

Keynote Lecture: Host-Microbiome Interaction in Health and Disease | Human commensal ecosystems (‘microbiomes’) play critical roles in regulating our health, by relaying multiple endogenous and environmental signals into the human body, ranging from nutritional, bio-geographic, and immune-related cues. Dysregulation of host-microbiome interactions constitutes a critical contributor to human disease, ranging from cardiometabolic disease, infectious predisposition, inflammatory disease, to even cancer and neurodegeneration. The Elinav lab pursues mechanisms participating in the reciprocal regulation between the host and its microbiome in health and a variety of common human disorders. Our findings demonstrate that understanding of the molecular basis of host-microbiome interactions enables the development of precision microbiome-related diagnostic and treatment approaches.

Prof. Eran Elinav, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor leading the Department of Systems Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and the Director of the Microbiome & Cancer Division at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany. His laboratories at the Weizmann Institute and DKFZ focus on deciphering the molecular basis of host-microbiome interactions and their effects on health and disease, with the aim of personalising medicine and nutrition. 

Dr. Elinav completed his medical degree (MD) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Hadassah Medical Center, graduating summa cum laude. This was followed by a clinical internship, a residency in internal medicine, and a physician-scientist position at the Gastroenterology Institute of the Tel Aviv Medical Center. He earned a PhD in immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science and subsequently undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine. 

Dr. Elinav has published over 250 papers in leading peer-reviewed journals, including major discoveries on the effects of host genetics, innate immune function, and environmental factors such as dietary composition and timing on the intestinal microbiome and its role in driving multi-factorial diseases. 

His honours include numerous awards for academic excellence, such as the Claire and Emmanuel G. Rosenblatt Award from the American Physicians for Medicine, the Alon Foundation Award, the Rappaport Prize for Biomedical Research, the Levinson Award for Basic Science Research, and the Landau Prize. He is an honourary guest professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and an international scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Italy |  University of Florence & Florence Careggi University Hospital

Research Interests: Antimicrobial agents, antimicrobial resistance (mechanisms, epidemiology), clinical microbiology, diagnostics 

Keynote Lecture: The evolutionary complexity of antimicrobial resistance (in a rapidly changing environment) | Antibiotics have contributed major advances in medicine and other sectors, but antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has relentlessly evolved in response to antibiotic exposure as a major challenge. Evolution of AMR follows complex trajectories, involving several factors, that are only partially understood. The objective of this lecture is to outline cases of AMR evolution of major relevance, highlighting the role of multidisciplinary collaboration among different areas of Microbiological Sciences in combating AMR.

Gian Maria Rossolini, MD, ESCMID Fellow, is Professor of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology at the University of Florence, Italy, and director of the Clinical Microbiology and Virology Unit of Florence Careggi University Hospital. He has previously served as Professor of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology, Chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology and Dean of the Medical Faculty at the University of Siena.

His main research interests are in the field of antimicrobial agents and microbial drug resistance. He has served as an Editor for Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and is a member of the Editorial Board of several international journals focused on Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. He has acted as reviewer/advisor on behalf of national and international funding agencies and of academic institutions for the selection of research grants and academic professorships, and as consultant of pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies in the fields of antimicrobial agents and diagnostic microbiology.

USA | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Research Interests: Soil microbiology, climate change, soil viruses, permafrost thaw, multi-omics, carbon cycle

Keynote Lecture: Dynamics of Soil Microorganisms in Space | Soil microorganisms carry out vital processes on Earth. Here we aimed to determine how the space environment on the International Space Station (ISS) impacted soil microbial community dynamics. We hypothesized that microgravity in space would influence microbe-microbe interactions and metabolite flow. Over a 3-month period, the soil microbial community dynamics was altered in space when compared to Earth, at the species, metabolite and gene expression level; suggesting that microgravity has an impact on the soil microbiome. In addition, the study provides details of soil carbon metabolism in soil using a multi-omics approach.

Janet Jansson is an Emeritus Chief Scientist and Laboratory Fellow at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where she served from 2014-2021. Previously, she was Professor and Vice Dean at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (2003-2007), Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2007-2014) and Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley and University of Copenhagen (2012-2014).

Janet Jansson's research focuses on the impacts of perturbations, such as oil spills and climate change, on environmental microbiomes. Jansson also pioneered use of molecular microbial ecology to study the human microbiome. She made considerable advances in understanding the impact of climate change on permafrost and grassland soil microbiomes and viruses. Jansson is a Fellow of the AAM, Washington State Academy of Science and AAAS. She has >250 publications (H-Index 92) and is one of the most highly cited researchers in the world. She is Past President of ISME and serves on numerous advisory panels.

FEMS MICRO 2025 will deliver the most innovative range of session types ever seen at our Congress & Exhibition. Featuring all the cutting-edge science from our abstract and session proposal submitters, we are also preparing an interdisciplinary programme of community-focused sessions ranging from meet-ups and fireside chats in the Community Corner to fully fledged debates on important topics.

Browse through the session types below and discover what is on offer.

Poster Displays | Flash Talks | Session Talks | Interactive Sessions | Community Corner | Debates

Dive into our main topics: Eco Innovation, Health Horizons, Biotechnology, and Engagement & Growth >