Invited speakers

Ed Topp

Since July 2023, Ed Topp has held the ANR/INSERM Chair of Excellence, Priority Research Programme: Antibiotic Resistance, and is Director of Research at the UMR Agroecology of the INRAE research centre in Dijon. Before coming to France, he was a senior researcher at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC). He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Western Ontario.

Ed is a microbiologist and environmental chemist who conducts research into animal and plant production practices that protect the environment and human health. He has published over 325 peer-reviewed publications, and has an H-index of 89 (accessed on Google Scholar on 5.2025). He was also Scientific Coordinator (2016-2023) of the Federal Genomics Research and Development Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance, a key component of the Canadian Federal Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance.

Ed is a past president of the Canadian Society of Microbiologists (2011) and has received the Ontario Water and Environment Association's Research Excellence Award (2014), Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Gold Harvest Lifetime Achievement Award (2015), the Government of Canada's Public Service Award of Excellence for Scientific Contribution (2016), was elected a corresponding member of the French Academy of Agriculture (2016) and has been appointed a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America in 2022.

Conférence: La modélisation peut-elle résoudre des questions insolubles concernant l’antibiorésistance environnementale ?

Laurent Philippot

Laurent Philippot is Director of Research at the Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement (INRAE) and Deputy Director of the UMR Agroécologie in Dijon.

His work aims to establish links between the ecology of microbial communities, microbial processes and the functioning of ecosystems. As part of this, he studies how environmental conditions and agricultural practices influence the composition and activity of soil microbial communities, as well as the ecosystem services they support, such as climate regulation and nutrient cycling. He has developed this research theme by focusing particularly on the microbial guilds involved in the nitrogen cycle and greenhouse gas emissions.

He is the author of more than 200 scientific publications and book chapters, and has been/is a senior editor for The ISME Journal as well as a member of the editorial boards of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FEMS Microbiology Ecology and Frontiers in Terrestrial Microbiology.

In 2021, he was awarded the Lauriers de l'INRAE for the scientific challenge prize, and since 2018 has been in the top 0.1% of most cited researchers according to the Clarivate rankings, first in the interdisciplinary category and then in microbiology.
He is currently scientific coordinator of the France 2030 HARMI programme: Harnessing Microbiomes for Sustainable Development (https://www.ubfc.fr/en/research/research-projects-2/harmi/).

Conférence: Décryptage des interactions entre microorganismes dans les sols

Eve Toulza

Eve Toulza is a senior lecturer at the University of Perpignan Via Domitia and a member of the Host-Pathogen-Environment Interactions (IHPE) laboratory. She co-leads the MIA team ‘Micro-evolution of Interactions in the Anthropocene’.

Her research focuses on mechanisms of adaptation or acclimatisation to rapid environmental change, particularly the importance of microbiota in resistance to thermal or infectious stress. She works on various models of aquatic invertebrates of economic interest (Pacific oysters), ecological interest (scleractinian corals) or medical interest (molluscs that are vectors for trematode parasites) and their associated microbial communities, including microeukaryotes.
She is co-scientific and technical director of the LabEx TULIP ‘Towards a Unified Theory of Biotic Interactions’.

Conference: From host to holobiont, the role of microbiota in the adaptability of aquatic invertebrates.

Théodore Bouchez

Théodore Bouchez has been director of the PROSE research unit (INRAE, Antony) since 2019, after leading several teams at Irstea. An AgroParisTech engineer with a PhD in environmental biotechnology, he specialises in microbial ecology and bioprocesses applied to organic waste recovery and wastewater treatment. His research focuses on microbiome engineering, anaerobic digestion, electromicrobial technologies, and modelling and metabomics approaches. Author of more than 80 international publications, he is also co-inventor of nine patent families. He has coordinated several large-scale projects (Investissements d'avenir, ANR, PEPR France 2030) and led numerous projects with major industrial groups in the water and waste sector. He is and has been a member of several scientific councils (INRAE, HCERES, Centrale Supélec, etc.) and is a regular guest speaker at international conferences. A consulting professor at AgroParisTech and honorary professor at Tongji University (Shanghai, China), he has also been a director of the French Society for Microbiology (SFM) since 2021, a member of the Scientific Council and coordinator of the Microbial Biotechnology section.

Conference title: From microbial ecology to bioprocesses: assembling microbiomes to develop the bioeconomy 

Serena Rasconi 

Since 2019, Serena Rasconi has been a research fellow in planktonic ecology at INRAE CARRTEL (Alpine Centre for Research on Trophic Networks and Limnic Ecosystems) in Thonon les Bains. Her research focuses on biotic interactions and the functioning of lake ecosystems, with a particular focus on algae and their parasites.

Serena began her work in Verbania (Italy) studying bacteria and the carbon cycle in Lake Maggiore. She then completed a PhD in microbial ecology in Clermont Ferrand (now Clermont Auvergne University), studying the ecology and parasitic interactions between chytrid fungi and phytoplankton. She continued her work on plankton biodiversity and trophic transfer in natural lakes using an experimental approach in two main experiments in Norway and Austria.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Conference: Zoosporic parasites in aquatic systems and the COST Action ParAqua