Dr. Carlotta Ronda is a Principal Investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley, who pioneered targeted in situ microbiome editing tools to engineer microbes within their native ecosystems. Her lab integrates systems biology, synthetic biology, multi-omics, and computational modeling to decode and reprogram host–microbiome interactions. Combining high-throughput organoid assays, precision microbiome editing, and computational approaches, her team maps microbial signaling networks and develops strategies to modulate them. Beyond microbiome engineering, her group advances CRISPR technologies and organoid–microbiome co-cultures to study host–microbe communication and enable functional modulation in microbial and eukaryotic systems. She earned her BSc degree in Molecular Biology from University of Padua, her MSc in Biotechnology from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), and her PhD in Systems Biology from DTU and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability. She began developing her approach to editing complex microbial communities at Columbia University, as a Simons Society Junior Fellow, and continues this work at IGI.

Chun-Jun (CJ) Guo is an Associate Professor in the Jill Roberts Institute (JRI) for Research In Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Guo’s research program focuses on dissecting the molecular mechanisms behind microbiome-human interactions. His group will use bioinformatics, molecular genetics, metabolomics, and chemical biology approaches to examine how the microbiota metabolisms affect host metabolism and immunity in the context of health and diseases. His research program integrates microbiome genetics, metabolomics, and mouse models coupled with a significant effort to translate research findings made in mouse models into studies of immune/metabolism-mediated diseases including cancer. 

Justin Sonnenburg, PhD, is the Alex and Susie Algard Endowed Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he studies the gut microbiota in health and disease and co-directs the Center for Human Microbiome Studies.  He has received an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and Pioneer Award, and the AGA Research Mentor Award.  He and his wife and collaborator, Erica, are the authors of the book The Good Gut:  Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-Term Health.

Michael Fischbach is the Liu (Liao) Family Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University, an Institute Scholar of Stanford ChEM-H, and the director of the Stanford Microbiome Therapies Initiative. Fischbach is a recipient of the NIH Director's Pioneer and New Innovator Awards, an HHMI-Simons Faculty Scholars Award, a Fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a Medical Research Award from the W.M. Keck Foundation, a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease award, and the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. His laboratory studies the mechanisms of microbiome-host interactions. Fischbach received his Ph.D. as a John and Fannie Hertz Foundation Fellow in chemistry from Harvard in 2007, where he studied the role of iron acquisition in bacterial pathogenesis and the biosynthesis of antibiotics. After two years as an independent fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, Fischbach joined the faculty at UCSF, where he founded his lab before moving to Stanford in 2017. Fischbach is a co-founder of Revolution Medicines and Kelonia, a co-founder and director of Azalea, a member of the scientific advisory boards of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Stand Up to Cancer, and TCG Labs/Soleil Labs, and an innovation partner at The Column Group.

Dr. Laurel Lagenaur received her doctorate in Microbiology and Immunology from Stanford University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco, examining syndromes associated with HIV. She was the first employee to join Osel Inc. in Mountain View, CA, a live biotherapeutics company specializing in women's health and oncology. Dr. Lagenaur has been the principal investigator on numerous research grants, including Osel’s first SBIR grant to develop MucoCept-HIV as a novel live biotherapeutic to prevent HIV transmission in women. She is a microbiologist and molecular biologist with extensive experience in virology and clinical bacteriology.

Jordan Bisanz is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Dorothy Foehr and J. Lloyd Huck Early Career Chair in Host-Microbiome Interactions at the Pennsylvania State University and the One Health Microbiome Center. The Bisanz lab focuses on understanding how host-microbiota interactions shape health and disease. Through intertwining mechanistic research with the development of tools for meta-analysis-guided design of synthetic microbial communities, they are probing the complex bidirectional interaction networks between microbiotas and their hosts. The long-term goal of their research is to harness mechanistic understanding of the gut microbiota to develop new therapeutic targets and diagnostic tools.

Francisco J. Quintana, PhD is a Professor of Neurology at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and an Associate Member at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Dr. Quintana’s research investigates signaling pathways that control the immune response and neurodegeneration, with the ultimate goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets for immunotherapy and biomarkers for immune-mediated disorders.