Speakers of London Microbiome Meeting, 29th April 2015

Prof Tim Spector - King's College London
Tim Spector is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Director of the TwinsUK Registry at Kings College, London. He trained in rheumatology and epidemiology, but moved into genetic epidemiology in 1992 when he founded the UK Twins Registry, with currently 13,000 twins, which is one of the richest collections of genotypic and phenotypic information on twins worldwide. He is president of the International Society of Twin Studies and collaborates with over 120 centres worldwide. Its breadth of research has demonstrated the genetic basis of a wide range of common complex traits, many previously thought to be mainly due to ageing and environment. Through GWAS studies his group have found over 400 novel gene loci in over 30 disease areas. He has published over 700 research articles and is ranked as being in the top 1% of the world’s most published scientists by Reuters. He is holder of a prestigious European Research Council senior investigator award to study epigenetics as well as many other awards and grants. He is the author of several books, focusing on osteoporosis, genetics, epigenetics and recently on diet and microbiome (“The Diet Myth”) and has been featured widely in the media. 

Dr Michael Cox - Imperial College
Michael is a microbial ecologist by training and based at the Heart and Lung Institute where he researches the role of the human microbiota in respiratory illnesses such as cystic fibrosis and asthma, as well as acute infectious disease such as H1N1.  

Dr Gerard Clarke - University College Cork
Dr Clarke is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry, University College Cork (UCC) and is also an investigator in the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC). His laboratory takes a translational approach to interrogate the impact of the gut microbiome on brain and behaviour across the lifespan. This includes a focus on microbial regulation of tryptophan metabolism and host serotonin synthesis to influence microbiome-gut-brain axis communication. 

Dr Alex Mitchell - EBI
Alex Mitchell is curation co-ordinator for the EBI Metagenomics resource and the InterPro database at EMBL-EBI in Cambridge, UK. He oversees the daily running of the EBI metagenomics analysis pipeline, which has provided taxonomic and functional analysis for over 45 billion nucleotide sequences in the last 2 years. He holds a DPhil in pharmacology from the University of Oxford, and has over 10 years' experience in protein sequence analysis and classification (email: mitchell@ebi.ac.ukl) 

Dr Protima Amon - Queen Mary University
Protima is currently doing a PhD studying the microbiome in childhood Crohn’s disease. She is investigating whether enteral diets, used as first line therapy for children with active Crohn’s disease, affect the microbiota.  

Dr Richard Brown - Imperial College
Richard is a specialist registrar in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Queen Charlottes and Chelsea Hospital with a special interest in Preterm birth. He is currently in his second year of his PhD focusing upon the role of the Vaginal Microbiome in preterm prelabour rupture of membranes.  

Dr Emilie Stolarczyk - King's College London
Emilie is a research associate in the division of Diabetes and Nutritional Sciences at King's College London. Her research focuses on the role of the immune system in obesity and related metabolic diseases.