Program Highlights

Dr. Simonetta Gribaldo obtained her PhD in 2001 at the University La Sapienza of Rome. She then arrived in France for her postdoctoral work. After two postdoctoral internships at the Universities Paris 6 and Paris 11, she obtained a permanent researcher position at the Institut Pasteur in 2005. She was promoted research director in 2013 and full professor in 2020. Since 2018, she is head of the Unit Evolutionary Biology of the Microbial Cell at the Department of Microbiology, Institut Pasteur, Paris.

Professor Gribaldo is an established figure in the field of microbial evolution and diversity, with an original and broad vision on the whole Tree of Life. Professor Gribaldo has significantly impacted the field of large-scale microbial evolution and challenged widely held paradigms in Microbiology. Recently, she has contributed seminal insights on the evolution of the bacterial cell envelope. In parallel, she has started investigating the diversity, evolution, and biology of methanogenic archaea from the human gastrointestinal tract. To complement her in silico analyses, Professor Gribaldo has developed two new experimental models, the diderm Firmicute Veillonella parvula and the archaeal methanogen Methanobrevibacter smithii, both important members of the human microbiome.

Professor Gribaldo has over 140 publications in the top-rank journals in Microbiology and is regularly invited in the most prestigious conferences as invited speaker, session convener, or organizer. She actively participates in teaching and science outreach through public lectures, interviews, articles, and books.

Professor Gribaldo is elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the European Academy of Microbiology, and European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO). In 2023, she was laureate of the Program Impulscience of the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation.

Website: https://research.pasteur.fr/en/team/evolutionary-biology-of-the-microbial-cell/

Dr. Cox is an Associate Professor and holds a Canada Research Chair in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) within Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada). Dr. Cox’s training has centered on studying and combating antibiotic resistant pathogenic bacteria. She has nearly 20 years of experience studying AMR in microbial pathogens, building a strong foundation through work in laboratories renowned for their research into multidrug-resistant pathogens. She completed her PhD at the University of Leeds (United Kingdom), postdoctoral training with Dr. Gerry Wright at McMaster University (Hamilton, Canada), and started her own research group in 2017 at the University of Guelph. Dr. Cox’s current research program explores complex aspects of bacterial physiology in combination with cutting-edge drug discovery endeavors to ultimately combat pathogenic bacteria. Specifically, Dr. Cox and her group are exploring novel approaches to control bacterial infections by investigating and inhibiting bacterial adhesion to the host. Her lab also studies drug efflux pumps, to gain insight into the substrate specificities, physiological functions, and origins of these transporters, which will inform future drug discovery efforts and antibiotic stewardship.

Dr. Rabia Fatima is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University. She completed her BSc in Biochemistry before joining Dr. Alexander Hynes’ lab as an MSc student, later transferring into the PhD program in Biochemistry. Her doctoral research focused on exploring the therapeutic potential of temperate bacteriophages—viruses that can integrate into bacterial genomes and remain dormant—when combined with antibiotics. This work significantly advanced our understanding of how temperate phages can be leveraged as adjuvants in the treatment of multi-drug-resistant bacterial infections, expanding their clinical relevance. Following her PhD, her research has evolved to investigate the role of dormant phages in fungal-bacterial interactions during co-infection.

I joined the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology in January 2025. I first studied plant biology and ecology during my undergraduate studies at McGill and my master's degree at the University of Sherbrooke. I became interested in the ecology and evolution of plant-microbe associations during my PhD at UQAM, where I focused on the phyllosphere (i.e., the surface of plant leaves) as a study system. After three years at the Montreal Botanical Garden, my lab has now moved to the Centre Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologies of INRS where we pursue research on the forms and functions of leaf and root microbial symbioses. Alongside my research activities, I am particularly motivated by initiatives that bring researchers and citizens closer together.

Dr. Terrence Bell is a soil microbiologist and ecologist. He first worked as a faculty member at The Pennsylvania State University from 2017-2022 and has since worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto - Scarborough in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences. He held postdoctoral fellowships at l’Université de Montréal and Cornell University, after earning his B.Sc.H. from Queen’s University, his M.Sc. from Western University, and his Ph.D. from McGill University. His work explores the constraints on microbial niche breadth and the extent to which niche breadth can be modified by new environmental pressures. This research has fundamental implications for microbial biogeography, as well as the fitness and functional costs of different types of generalism. It also has numerous applications, including microbial product development, the limits of directed evolution for biotechnology, and the detection and management of microbial invasions.

Website: https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/labs/microbiomemanipulationlab/

Dr. Joe Schwarcz is Director of McGill University’s “Office for Science and Society” which has the mission of separating sense from nonsense. He is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching chemistry and for interpreting science for the public. He was the first non-American to win the American Chemical Society’s prestigious Grady-Stack award for popularizing chemistry. “Dr Joe” has hosted a radio show on science for forty-three years, has appeared hundreds of times on television, writes a regular newspaper column and is the author of nineteen best-sellers. He has been awarded four honorary doctorates and teaches a course on “Food and Nutrition” that with 2700 students holds the record for the largest enrolment for any university course in Canada. Professor Schwarcz is also an amateur magician, often spicing up his presentations with a little magic.

Delphine Douillet is a Senior Genomics Specialist at Illumina, where she applies her expertise and in-depth knowledge of the genomics landscape in Canada to promote the adoption of cutting-edge technologies by researchers and clinicians. Holding a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Bordeaux, Delphine's research background spans chemo-genetic interactions in cancer biology and epigenetics, with her postdoctoral work at Northwestern University in Chicago published in Nature Genetics. She joined Illumina in 2019 as a Field Applications Scientist, helping customers adopt next-generation sequencing technologies, fostering advancements in genomic research and its clinical applications.

Cameron Davidson-Pilon is a bad statistician turned even worse hardware engineer. CEO/Founder of Pioreactor. Former Director of Data Science at Shopify. Cameron's background includes mathematics, statistics, computer science (topics blogged at dataorigami.net) and food science (topics blogged at controlledmold.com) . He is the author of "Bayesian Methods for Hackers". Cameron now explores the biology through the perspective of computers and data.

Eammon MacNeil, M.Sc., is a Product Manager and Territory Sales Manager at Scintica Instrumentation. With a background in biomedical sciences from Queen’s University and expertise in ion channel modulation and neuroendocrine secretion, he brings a strong scientific foundation to support researchers in advancing anaerobic and low-oxygen cell culture applications.

Dr. Salim Timo Islam is an Associate Professor at the Centre Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologie of the INRS (Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique) in Laval, QC. He first became interested in the bacterial cell surface during his Hon.BSc studies at the University of Toronto through work with mycobacterial lipids in the lab of Dr. Jun Liu. This interest continued through PhD studies on O-antigen biosynthesis in Pseudomonas aeruginosa at the University of Guelph in the lab of Dr. Joe Lam. This was followed by postdoctoral research at the CNRS-Laboratory of Bacterial Chemistry in Marseille, France in the group of Dr. Tâm Mignot studying the myxobacterial gliding motility machinery. Since opening his lab at the INRS, his team has been using predatory Myxococcus xanthus as a model system to probe a range of fundamental bacterial processes including polysaccharide secretion, motility, outer-membrane dynamics, and kin recognition.

Christopher Fernandez-Prada, DVM, PhD is an Associate Professor of Parasitology in the Department of Pathology and Microbiology at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, where he also directs the Animal Parasitology Diagnostic Laboratory. An adjunct professor at McGill and Laval Universities, Dr. Fernandez-Prada leads a multidisciplinary program on antimicrobial resistance, extracellular vesicle biology, and host-parasite interactions in Leishmania and other neglected zoonotic pathogens. His team combines molecular parasitology, multi-omics integration, and advanced approaches to uncover drug-resistance mechanisms and develop One-Health-oriented diagnostics and interventions. His recent honors include the 2024 Vétoquinol Graduate Supervision Award, 2023 Canadian NTDs Outstanding Paper and Zoetis Research Awards, a 2022 Québec Science Top-10 Discovery, the 2021 CIHR Bhagirath Singh Early Career Award, and the 2018 Zoetis Innovation Award.

Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe is a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Guelph, and the Canada Research Chair in Human Gut Microbiome and Host Interactions. Her research focuses on the microbial ecology of the human gut, and she runs a highly specialized laboratory equipped to culture the often extremely fastidious and anaerobic microbes found in the human microbiome, both axenically and as part of defined, complex communities (e.g. using bioreactor technology). She was a contributor of many isolates to the Human Microbiome Project strain collection, and she participates in several ongoing efforts to standardize measurement of the microbiome. Her research projects have been funded both nationally and internationally and include studies of the microbiome in Type 1 and 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer, the effects of dietary substrates on the gut microbiome, as well as more recent work to characterize the so-called VANISH (Volatile and/or Associated Negatively with Industrialized Societies of Humans) microbes of the Yanomami people of the Amazon. Emma also has a long-standing interest in the biology and host interactions of Fusobacterium spp., and was part of the group that first recognized F. nucleatum as an ‘oncomicrobe’ in colorectal cancer. When not trying to culture fastidious microbes, Emma likes to spend her time growing fastidious plants.

My favorite scientific question is “how is parasitism a sustainable biological relationship?” I addressed this question through the study of various microbes, the human Epstein Barr virus (doctoral thesis at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and post doctorate at the Institut Gustave Roussy), protozoa parasites of bivalve molluscs (post doctorate at Ifremer), bacteria of the Vibrio genus pathogenic in oysters, shrimp or corals (Ifremer, Institut Pasteur in Paris, Harvard Medical School in Boston; Roscoff Biological Station) and more recently viruses which infect Vibrios, the bacteriophages.

Holder of the Canada Research Chair of Excellence “Eco-Evo-Patho of microbes in nature”, Full Professor at the University of Montreal since September 2023 and IVADO member, I aspire to create a team of enthusiasts, followers of “non-model” organizations, a diverse, equitable, inclusive and committed team to eco-responsible approaches.

Dr. Zhenyu Cheng is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University.

His lab has been focusing on the study of host-bacterial interactions. Dr. Cheng finished his undergraduate study in 2002 at Wuhan University in China. He then went to University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada to pursue his graduate studies. After obtaining his PhD degree in 2010, Dr. Cheng went to Boston for his postdoctoral position that is jointly appointed in the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. During his postdoctoral training, Dr. Cheng received a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Government of Canada, followed by a Tosteson Medical Discovery Award from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cheng started his independent research lab at Dalhousie University since 2016. He is a recipient of Dalhousie President’s Research Excellence Awards for Emerging Investigators and Canadian Institutes of Health Research Bhagirath Singh Early Career Prize in Infection and Immunity. His CF-related research mainly focuses on the opportunistic bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, particularly host inflammatory and stress signaling pathways modulated by bacteria-secreted proteases. In addition, the Cheng lab also characterize the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) mechanisms and strive to tackle the AMR issues.

Dr. Sylvain Moineau has been a Professor of Microbiology at the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the Université Laval (Québec, Canada) since 1996. His research focuses on phage biology and the interactions between phages and bacteria. His team investigates phage resistance mechanisms, such as CRISPR-Cas systems, to develop phage-resistant bacterial strains for food and dairy applications. He is also working on strategies to use phages as biocontrol agents in various industrial sectors and public health. Since 2011, he has held the Canada Research Chair in Bacteriophages, and since 2003, he has served as Curator of the Félix d’Hérelle Reference Center for Bacterial Viruses. Over the course of his career, he has received numerous academic honors, including the Killam Prize, the NSERC John C. Polanyi and Synergy Awards, and the Canadian Society of Microbiologists Murray Award. He has also been recognized with civil honors, including Officer of the Order of Canada and Officer of the National Order of Quebec. Prof. Moineau has supervised over 100 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, published 280 research articles, authored 23 book chapters, gave 225 invited seminars, and holds 13 patents. According to Clarivate Analytics is among the most cited microbiologists for the past decade.

Dr Dufresne is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Biological Sciences at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). During her PhD, she has trained on gene regulation for virulence of S. enterica serovar Typhi with Dr France Daigle (Université de Montréal). As a postdoc, she focused her training on pathogenesis of S. aureus in models mimicking the human vagina with Dr John McCormick (University of Western Ontario). She started her research group in September 2024. She centers her expertise on the study of bacterial gene regulation, bacterial interactions and pathogenesis in the context of women’s health.

Dr. Sadri ZNAIDI is a biochemist (B.Sc., M.Sc. from the Université de Sherbrooke) and molecular biologist (Ph.D., from the Université de Montréal), with expertise in yeast genetics and functional genomics. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Systems Biology in the Department of Biology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is also a Pasteur Network Affiliate Program fellow, with affiliations at the Pasteur Institutes in Tunis, Tunisia, and Paris, France.