Michael Abt is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Michael received his Ph.D. in Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania where he trained in the laboratories of Dr. David Artis and Dr. John Wherry and studied how the microbiota modulate antiviral immunity. His postdoctoral research was conducted at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the laboratory of Dr. Eric Pamer and focused on the innate immune response to enteric bacterial pathogens, including C. difficile. In 2018 he returned to UPenn to start his independent lab. The ongoing focus of the Abt lab is to study interactions between the microbiota and the immune system in the context of infectious disease.

Dr. Dawson is an Assistant Professor of Microbiology at the LSHTM where her research group focuses on unravelling mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis, in Clostridioides difficile. She completed her Ph.D. in mechanisms of pathogenesis in Mycobacterium tuberculosis at the National Institute for Medical Research (UCL) before starting working on C. difficile in 2006 as a Postdoctoral Fellow. In collaboration with Nigel Minton’s group at the University of Nottingham, she was one of the first scientists globally to successfully produce and publish gene inactivation mutants in C. difficile. Her team, in collaboration with other internationally renowned research groups, established that spores are essential in persistence and transmission of C. difficile. She also determined that the sporulation master regulator, Spo0A, is a key factor in biofilm formation and that biofilms can be disrupted by DNase, a potential therapeutic (Patent: GB1208879.5, US20160058846A1). Genetic manipulation of C. difficile enabled her research group to identify two potential targets for the development of novel anti-C. difficile therapeutics; strB, which encodes a functional sortase, responsible for the covalent anchoring of cell surface proteins to peptidoglycan (Patent: WO2011104531A3) and the enzyme responsible for the production of p-cresol, HpdBCA decarboxylase, which converts para-hydroxyphenylacetate to p-cresol. P-cresol production by C. difficile provides a competitive advantage by selectively targeting beneficial bacteria in the gut microbiome to promote relapse of CDI. She recently was awarded a prestigious biomedical catalyst grant (MRC-DPSF) in collaboration with Prof. Weng Chan (University of Nottingham) to develop a novel anti-microbial to treat CDI. The current focus of her research group uses genetics, genomics, and proteomics, to unravel bacterial systems to facilitate the identification of novel drug targets for intervention in C. difficile infection, whilst minimising the impact on the resident ‘beneficial’ gut microbiome.

Dr. Hryckowian, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Medical Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His background in bacteriophage biology (BS, Microbiology, University of Pittsburgh), bacterial pathogenesis (Ph.D., Microbiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison), and microbiome science (Postdoctoral Fellowship, Microbiology & Immunology, Stanford University) informs his lab’s research. The work in the Hryckowian lab is aimed at developing new concepts and approaches for mitigating infection by drug-resistant pathogens (e.g. Clostridioides difficile) and diseases where the microbiome plays a strong role (e.g. Inflammatory bowel disease). One of the ongoing projects in the Hryckowian lab seeks to understand the ways in which diet impacts C. difficile infection and to begin to exploit dietary intervention as an alternative, distinct from antibiotics or a fecal transplant, for mitigating C. difficile infection in humans. This is Drew’s first ClostPath and certainly not his last!

Chris Lopez received his Bachelor’s degree in Animal Science at UC Davis, where he stayed to work in the lab of Dr. Andreas Baumler. There he received his Ph.D. in Microbiology exploring how Salmonella and Citrobacter acquire nutrients during inflammation. Chris then started a postdoctoral position in the lab of Dr. Eric Skaar at Vanderbilt University where he examined C. difficile responses to host nutritional immunity. Chris is currently an Assistant Professor at California State University, Sacramento with a research focus on how pathogenic and non-pathogenic Clostridia adapt to environmental stress.

Dr. Purcell is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. She earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Chicago in 2011 under the supervision of Dr. Sean Crosson. She did her postdoctoral work with Dr. Rita Tamayo at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Her research group focuses on stress survival in Gram-positive bacterial pathogens. Recent activity includes investigating the effects of nanosecond electric pulses on biofilms of Cutibacterium acnes and Staphylococcus aureus and characterizing nucleotide alarmone signaling in Clostridioides difficile.

Dr. Sun is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Molecular Medicine, College of Medicine at the University of South Florida (USF). He holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Cell Biology, Microbiology & Molecular Biology, Department of Chemistry at USF, and USF Genomics. He received his Ph.D. in Natural Sciences from the University of Kiel, Germany, and his Master's Degree in Veterinary Microbiology and Immunology from the Nanjing Agricultural University, China. He received his postdoctoral training in Molecular Microbiology and Biochemistry at Brown University, USA. The research in his laboratory is focused on the pathogenesis of Clostridioides difficile and the development of novel therapeutics including vaccines to prevent/treat C. difficile infection (CDI). ​​He was an NIH Career Development K01 Awardee. His laboratory is continuously supported by several NIH grants. He has been actively serving NIH study section panels including chairing the NIH study section panel. He serves as an Associate Editor for “Molecular Medicine”, a topic editor for “Frontiers in Microbiology”, and editorial boards for “Infection and Immunity” and “Applied and Environmental Microbiology”. He received Tufts Institute for Innovation Inaugural Award in 2014. He chaired the Research Committee of College of Medicine at USF from 2019 to 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the "Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award" at USF. In 2019, he was awarded the "Excellence in Innovation Award" at USF.

Dr. Unnikrishnan completed her Ph.D. at Imperial College London studying streptococcal superantigens. She was awarded an American Heart Association post-doctoral fellowship to study host-trypanosomal interactions at Harvard University, Boston. Following this she studied Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogenesis, focusing on the specialized type VII secretion systems. After her postdoctoral training, Dr. Unnikrishnan joined Novartis Vaccines, Italy as a Senior Scientist, where her group investigated the functions of Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile vaccine candidates. She joined the University of Warwick, UK as Faculty in 2013, where she is currently an Associate Professor of Molecular Bacteriology. Her research focuses on understanding host-pathogen interactions of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens including C. difficile and S. aureus. Her group studies mechanisms of C. difficile colonization and persistence with a focus on biofilms, bacterial interactions with the gut epithelium and the microbiota.