Speakers

Francisco Quintana

Dr. Quintana is a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (USA). He is a leading neuroimmunologist studying interactions between the immune and nervous systems in inflammation, neurodegeneration, and cancer. His research has revealed how glial cells, metabolism, the microbiome, and environmental factors regulate neuroinflammation and disease. His laboratory has also developed innovative technologies, including FIND-seq, SPEAC-seq, and RABID-seq, to investigate complex cellular interactions. His pioneering work established the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) as a key regulator of immune responses and guided the development of tapinarof, an FDA-approved AHR-targeting therapy. Dr. Quintana has authored more than 280 peer-reviewed publications and has received numerous prestigious awards for his contributions to neuroimmunology. He was named the Kuchroo Weiner Distinguished Professor of Neuroimmunology in 2021 and elected to the National Academy of Inventors in 2025.

Giovanni Barbara

Dr. Barbara is a full professor of gastroenterology at the University of Bologna (Italy) where he chairs the Gastroenterology Unit and Internal Medicine and Digestive Pathophysiology Unit. He completed his medical degree and gastroenterology training at the University of Bologna, with additional training in London and a postdoctoral research fellowship in neuroimmunology at McMaster University. His research focuses on disorders of gut-brain interaction, neurogastroenterology, and the gut microbiota, spanning both basic and clinical research. Professor Barbara has published extensively in leading biomedical journals and has served on the editorial boards of several major gastroenterology journals, including Gastroenterology and Gut. He has received numerous national and international awards for his contributions to gastroenterology and neurogastroenterology. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Rome Foundation, Past-President of the European Society of Neurogastroenterology and Motility, and Chair of its Gut Microbiota and Health Section.

John Cryan

Dr. Cryan is a professor and chair of the Department of Anatomy & Neuroscience at University College Cork (UCC, Ireland) and has served as Vice President for Research & Innovation since 2021. He is also a Principal Investigator at the APC Microbiome Institute. He holds a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Galway (Ireland), was a visiting fellow at the University of Melbourne, and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla. He spent four years as a Group Leader at Novartis in Basel before returning to Ireland and UCC in 2005. His research focuses on the microbiome-gut–brain axis and its role in stress, psychiatric, and immune-related disorders across the lifespan. He is co-author of the bestselling book The Psychobiotic Revolution and serves on more than 15 different editorial boards. Prof. Cryan has received numerous international awards and was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2017. An avid science communicator he has delivered TEDMED and TEDx talks and was featured in the Netflix documentary Hack Your Health: The Secrets of the Gut.

Ali Keshavarzian

Dr. Keshavarzian is a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at Rush University (USA). He is a board-certified gastroenterologist and clinician-scientist with more than 40 years of experience specializing in inflammatory bowel disease and gastrointestinal complications of Parkinson’s disease. He served as Chief of Gastroenterology at three academic institutions for 30 years and is currently the Founding Director of the Rush Center for Integrated Microbiome and Chronobiology Research and Director of the Rush Center for Circadian Rhythm and Alcohol-Induced Tissue Injury. His research examines how environmental factors, including stress, alcohol, sleep, and circadian disruption, affect the intestinal barrier, microbiome, and host–microbiome interactions, contributing to systemic inflammation and disease. His pioneering work has highlighted the role of gut permeability and microbiome dysbiosis in conditions including alcohol-associated tissue injury, IBD, HIV, and Parkinson’s disease. Continuously supported by NIH funding since 1986, Dr. Keshavarzian has authored more than 450 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.

Emily Leeming

Dr. Leeming is a research associate in the Department of Twin Research, Ageing & Genomic Epidemiology at King's College London (England), researching how diet shapes the gut microbiome and its links to health. Her current work investigates dietary fibre and early-onset colorectal cancer through the EAT-FIBRE study, a whole-diet randomised trial in monozygotic twins within the PROSPECT Cancer Grand Challenges team. A registered dietitian and former chef, she is also a public science communicator and the author of Genius Gut and Fibre Power.

Maya Kaelberer

Dr. Kaelberer is an assistant professor at the University of Arizona (USA). She is a sensory neurobiologist that is excited about understanding our gut sense. Her academic journey began with a dual degree in Neuroscience and Psychology from the University of California San Diego, followed by a Ph.D. in Cellular & Molecular Physiology at Yale University. Dr. Kaelberer is interested in how our early sensory circuitry filters how we perceive the physical world. She believes that understanding our gut sense will inform us about the language the gut is using to communicate to the brain about the food we eat.

Paul Moayyedi

Dr. Moayyedi qualified from Bristol University and obtained a PhD and Masters in Public Health from the University of Leeds. He moved to McMaster University in 2004 and was Director of the Division of Gastroenterology at McMaster in 2006-2017. He holds the Audrey Campbell Chair of Ulcerative Colitis Research and is past President of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology. He has published over 530 peer-reviewed articles that have been cited approximately 100,000 times with an h index of 149 and is in the ClarivateTM Highly Cited

Researcher list. He is the Co-Editor in Chief of Gastroenterology with David Weinberg. He led the first randomized trial to show fecal microbiota transplant was effective at inducing remission in active ulcerative colitis.

Premysl Bercik

Dr. Bercik is Professor of Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. A clinician-scientist, he conducts clinical and basic research on the microbiota-gut-brain axis, neuroimmune interactions, gastrointestinal motility, functional bowel disorders, and celiac disease. He has published more than 140 peer-reviewed papers and has a Google Scholar h-index of 75, with more than 27,000 citations. He received the 2021 Research Excellence Award from the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology (CAG) and currently serves as CAG’s Vice-President of Research. His microbiome research spans more than 25 years. It began with studies of the role of H. pylori in gastric acid secretion, expanded to the effects of commensal bacteria on gut motility and visceral sensitivity, and finally exploring interactions between the gut microbiota and brain function.

Michael Surette

Dr. Surette is a professor in the Department of Medicine and Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University and Director of the Farncombe Genomics Facility. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2018. Dr. Surette’s research addresses the human microbiome in health and disease combining culture and culture-independent methods. In addition to understanding fundamental questions about microbiome composition and microbe-microbe/host interactions, his lab is interested in developing microbiome directed therapeutics. The Surette lab manages the microbiome sequencing and analysis for two large Canadian cohorts (CLSA Healthy Brains Healthy Aging and SPOR IMAGINE).

Giada De Palma

Dr. De Palma is an assistant professor at the Farncombe Institute, specializing in microbiome research and its interactions with the neuro-immune system. Dr. De Palma completed her PhD in microbiology in Valencia (Spain) on the role of the gut microbiome in celiac disease. She then moved to Canada for a postdoctoral fellowship on the microbiome–gut–brain axis with Dr. Premysl Bercik and Dr. Stephen Collins, with whom she continues to work to this day. Her work focuses on translational research exploring the gut microbiome’s role in disorders of the gut-brain axis and mental health conditions. She has a particular interest in microbiome-diet interactions, microbially derived metabolites and their impact on host physiology and symptom presentation.

Zeinab Hosseinidoust

Dr. Hosseinidoust is a chemical engineer turned bioengineer. She is an associate professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering at McMaster University. She obtained her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (Germany) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University. Her lab is recognized for research excellence by the Canada Research Chairs program and the Ontario Early Researcher Award and featured by public media around the globe. Her research program is interdisciplinary and thus inherently collaborative. She is a core member of The Farncombe Institute for Digestive Health and an associate member at the Michael DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, the School of Biomedical Engineering, and the Center for Protective Equipment and Material (CEPEM), as well as the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research.

Shahrokh Shekarriz

Dr. Shekarriz is a postdoctoral fellow at the Farncombe Institute, with independent research funding. He completed his MSc under Dr. Golding and his PhD under Dr. Surette, both at McMaster University, followed by a remote postdoctoral collaboration with Dr. Taylor at the University of Calgary. His research aims to understand how the gut microbiota shapes health and gastrointestinal diseases, with a recent focus on developing DNA-based sequencing methods to detect human diet from stool samples.

Fernando Vicentini

Dr. Vicentini is a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University’s Farncombe Institute, working in the Bercik-Collins lab to investigate how the microbiota modulates pain sensation and complex behaviours. He completed his MSc at the State University of Maringá (Brazil) and his PhD at the University of Calgary. His research in the neurobiology of the intestinal tract has provided insights into how the microbiota influence both the gut and central nervous systems. He also has a deep interest in the mechanisms of intestinal inflammation, mainly in the context of inflammatory bowel disease, and how peripheral inflammation can modulate brain function. His work is driven by the premise that a better understanding of gut physiology ultimately will lead to therapeutic approaches for disorders of the brain.