Shahram Lavasani
Dr. Shahram Lavasani is an international keynote speaker and entrepreneur in the field of the microbiome. He received his PhD in Immunology from Lund University/Sweden. With more than two decades of teaching and research expertise on Gut-Brain axis, he has pioneered research in multiple sclerosis by demonstrating gut inflammation and barrier dysfunction and introduced microbiota-based therapies using probiotic bacterial consortia. He is the founder of ImmuneBiotech developing novel microbiome therapeutics. The company has access to a proprietary lactobacilli library and advanced selection technologies to design nutritional formulations for optimal management of the diseases. ImmuneBiotech´s first product GutMagnific® has been designed to address the underlying causes of IBS and it is currently investigated, in collaboration with Karolinska Institute, for treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) a neuroimmune condition and a possible long-term effect of Covid-19. GutMagnific® has successfully been launched in October 2019.
Silke Heinzmann
Cheryl Zimberlin
Suneer Jain
I am a driven, educated, and enthusiastic scientist that believes in the healing of molecular medicine. Over the past several years, my career has afforded me the opportunity to work with some of the nation’s most foremost experts in the fields of molecular medicine, sequencing, and cell technology. I have worked on a number of exciting and innovative projects and was part of the team that established the Illumina Clinical Services Laboratory and worked to successfully sequence the first whole human genome in a CLIA-certified, CAP-accredited laboratory.
Wendy Russell
Prof Jeroen Raes
Prof. Jeroen Raes (m) is associate professor at KU Leuven since 2013 and VIB group leader since 2009. His group currently consists of 16 scientists, with expertise in bioinformatics, systems biology, clinical research and microbiology. He has a substantial track record in microbiome research and has been pioneering the analysis and integration of meta-omics datasets (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, meta-metabolomics) with environmental, clinical, host omics and dietary data.
He was involved in the FP7 MetaHIT and NIH Human Microbiome Project (the latter as only European partner), which laid the foundations for the human microbiome field as it is today. Finally, his lab is performing a wide range of disease-related projects in a.o. IDB, diabetes, cancer, IBS and antibiotics resistance on national (FWO/IWT) funding and develops novel approaches and tools for microbiome research.
Jeroen Raes coordinates the Flemish Gut Flora project, a large scale microbiome- focused population cohort in Belgium, and is bioinformatics coordinator in the Tara Oceans project performing large-scale meta-omics analysis of plankton communities.