Scientific Programme

The 14th Symposium programme can be found here and will include:

14 invited plenary lectures providing overviews of state-of-the-art developments in five selected scientific areas,

3 short plenary lectures, selected from the abstracts, that cover the most recent advances in LAB research and poster flash sessions allowing selected authors to present an outline of their poster to the plenary audience.

Extensive time for poster sessions.

Detailed Programme
The scientific areas that will be covered are

[1] Microbial Communities,
[2] Genetics and Genomics,
[3] Fermentation and Metabolism, including the role of LABs in the fermentation of plant based proteins,
[4] Host-Microbe Interactions,
[5] Bacteriophages and Antimicrobials.

Leading scientists from outside the LAB-community have also been included in the Programme to cover important emerging fields.

These invited speakers will provide the most current updates on their exciting research. Plenary lectures will be followed by an on-stage discussion session.

Keynote Speaker

Prof. dr. Oscar Kuipers

Oscar Kuipers is Professor in Molecular Genetics and heads the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Groningen since 1999. He was trained in molecular biology and biochemistry and moved to the direction of molecular genetics and synthetic biology after his PhD. Central topics in his research are the development of novel antimicrobials by synthetic biology approaches, studying population heterogeneity and bistability of clonal bacterial populations at the single cell level, physiology and applications of lactic acid bacteria, and bacterial gene regulation and genomics. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the European Academy of Microbiology.

Mode of action, mechanism of biosynthesis and engineering of antimicrobial peptides from LAB and beyond

Confirmed Speakers

Ahmad Zeidan PHD

Chr. Hansen, Denmark

From Genotype to Phenotype: Computational approaches for inferring microbial traits relevant to the food industry

Prof. dr. Birgitte Kallipolitis

University of Southern Denmark

Regulatory RNAs or on antimicrobial free fatty acids (to be determined)

Prof. Dr. Colin Hill

University College Cork, Ireland

After a century of nisin research – where are we now?

Dr. Dominique Holtappels

Postdoctoral researcher University of California, Berkeley, USA

Drivers of bacteriophage host range and their consequences from an eco-evolutionary and biotechnological perspective

Giovanna Felis PHD

Associate Professor Universita di Verona, Italy

Biodiversity, taxonomy and the new era of LAB biotechnology

Prof. Dr. Maria Marco

UC Davis, USA

Extracellular electron transfer as a metabolic strategy of lactobacilli

Prof. Dr. Mark Turner

University of Queensland, Australia

Cyclic-di-AMP signalling in lactic acid bacteria

Prof. Dr. Sylvain Moineau

Universite Laval, Canada

LAB phages

Mohamed Abou Donia PHD

Associate Professor Princeton University, USA

Small-molecule-mediated interactions in the human microbiome

Prof. Dr. Frederic Leroy

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

Title to be determined

Prof. Dr. Bert Poolman

University of Groningen, The Netherlands

The crowded cytoplasm

Prof. Dr. Jennifer Mahony

University College Cork, Ireland

Phage-host interactions of dairy streptococci

Dr. Sin-Hyeog Im

 

Pohang University of Science and Technology, South Korea

Effector molecules of LAB in immune stimulation in the GI tract

Véronique Monnet

 

MICALIS-INRAE , France

The bacterial chatbox: what the message?

Poster contributions in all areas of research on Lactic Acid Bacteria, especially on industrial applications, are encouraged.