Events will be hosted January – December in 2026, on the last Wednesday of every month, 11:00 – 13:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
New this year: the live session will be available free, but the on-demand video-recording will only be available to MSE members for the first year (and available to the public afterwards).
Summary:
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic we, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
“The Secret World Within: How the Microbiome Provides Insight into Gynecologic Health”
Dr. Nicole Jimenez, PhD
Aug 26, 2026, 11:00 – 13:00 EDT.
Dr. Nicole Jimenez is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, specializing in gynecologic health research. Raised in Arizona, she was inspired by mentors in programs such as the Si Se Puede Foundation and ASU’s Los Diablos, and by her innate curiosity, to pursue a career as a scientist. She completed her doctoral degree in 2021 from Virginia Commonwealth University as part of the Vaginal Microbiome Consortium, studying the microbiome in the context of bacterial vaginosis, trichomoniasis, and pregnancy. Currently, her postdoctoral research, conducted in Dr. Melissa Herbst-Kralovetz’s lab, focuses on conditions such as chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, adenomyosis, cervical and endometrial cancer, utilizing multi-omic pipelines, microbial culturomics, and 3D epithelial cell models. Dr. Jimenez has demonstrated a strong commitment to academic excellence, evidenced by recently securing the American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship, publishing manuscripts in microbiology and clinically focused journals, and receiving the 2025 University of Arizona Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar Award. Driven by her passions for science, advocacy, and mentorship—having guided 22 students across various levels—she is actively preparing for a transition to an independent faculty position to continue her translational work on understudied gynecologic conditions through the lens of the microbiome. A recent article can be found here.
As far as auspicious beginnings go, listening to dozens of tropical birds share news in a blooming city park while watching the rising sun peek out of the clouds leftover from a pre-dawn rain, the city traffic a distant hum under the nearby laughter of morning walkers watching their dogs frolic, is a heck of a way to begin a week-long conference on microbes and global health. Microbes feed the planet by interfacing between geological processes and biological ones: single-celled microbes take basic elements up to complex chemical compounds and back down again to the basics, all of which allows more complex forms of life to access the chemicals they need. Microbes help provide critical nutrients to the plants in this park, they help the parrots digest their food, they can even act as the physical seeds around which molecules of water gather into drops to create rain.
The International Society of Microbial Ecology hosts their major scientific conference every two years in rotating locations around the world, this year in Auckland, New Zealand. While every flavor of microbiology can be found here at the conference, there are always themes of building a collective and reducing the negative impacts of human activities while amplifying the positive ones. For example, there were presentations about the detriment of clearcutting for mono-cropping of commodities, as well as presentations on how migratory grazing of domesticated livestock creates biodiversity hotspots in grasslands due to manure and urine nutrients as well as turnover of plants (grazing allows for competition from other plants but also germinates seeds that need to pass through a digestive tract). In short, the way we live our lives and interact with the planet affects the microbes we interact with and the ones we leave behind, and when we do this intentionally and with mutual benefit in mind, everything can flourish.
Yet, deciding on that course of action is not necessarily without logistical burdens: what should we change, and what will be the outcome? Do the benefits outweigh the problems that will occur? How do we prioritize land use decisions when some people think the destruction of air, water, soil, plants, animals, and people caused by data centers is worth it to support mass surveillance of the public? Thus, the process of making policy decisions or design choices which intentionally support microbial communities for the benefit of environments, organisms, and renewing natural resources can be arduous: between sparse information about remote microbes, to getting people to agree on the value of nature, to enacting change across borders, it is understandable that the pace of innovation crawls in comparison to the swiftness of changes to our world and the urgency to save ourselves while we can (microbes and other life on this planet will survive the consequences our actions even if we don’t). Worthwhile endeavors are neither quick nor cheap, and if we can focus for decades on making space travel and inhabitation viable, then surely the collective intelligence of humanity can figure out how to terraform without destroying the very ground beneath our feet.
My goals were triple-fold at the ISME conference: to learn about cutting-edge research, to widen and strengthen my network of colleagues, and to make progress on spreading awareness of and setting priorities for the Ethics, Conservation and Management Planning Working Group of the new Microbial Conservation Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC MCSG ECMP). Some of the leadership team of that group was in Auckland, and we took the opportunity to meet about setting priorities over the next year.
Gabriele Berg, Raquel Peixoto, Sue, Jack Gilbert chatting about ISME and microbial conservation.Some of the IUCN team at ISME20: Jack Gilbert, Gabriele Berg, Chris Greening, Lucy Harper, Sue, Raquel Peixoto
Additionally,, I initiated conversations about the group to invite researchers who are already working in this conceptual space, which was incredibly easy at the ISME conference because everyone here has some connection to sustainability, conservation, stewardship, equitable collaborations, and sharing of research outcomes. In particular, the session on “Indigenous Knowledge – solutions for global environmental changes” featured speakers who were all focused on protecting microbial communities and the unique ecosystems that host them, as well as trying to prevent the bioprospecting from and exclusion of local (and especially Indigenous, see most of recorded modern history for examples) peoples that occurred during the ‘gold rush’ early years of microbial ecology, ecology, conservation, anthropology – actually pretty much most fields were used as an excuse to pillage. One audience member of that session told the story of how, after the first papers describing novel microbes in delicate and uncatalogued ecosystems in Argentina were published, researchers from other countries flooded to the area to study and collect them, often actively destroying ecosystems in the process by driving on the very microbial mats they had come to study.
With a complicated legacy to remediate and learn from, conservation must be united with ethics, and thus the ECMP subgroup is tasked with learning from history, promoting equitable practices already being used around the globe, and trying to enact these best practices into education and policy to move us into a better way of treating each other and planet.
Learn more about the Ethics Subgroup and the Microbial Special Group
Please visit the MCSG website for more information, and if you are at ISME20, reach visit the Applied Microbiology International publications display table to learn more and join an information session.
Events will be hosted January – December in 2026, on the last Wednesday of every month, 11:00 – 13:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
New this year: the live session will be available free, but the on-demand video-recording will only be available to MSE members for the first year (and available to the public afterwards).
Summary:
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic we, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
Dr. Nicole Jimenez is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, specializing in gynecologic health research. Raised in Arizona, she was inspired by mentors in programs such as the Si Se Puede Foundation and ASU’s Los Diablos, and by her innate curiosity, to pursue a career as a scientist. She completed her doctoral degree in 2021 from Virginia Commonwealth University as part of the Vaginal Microbiome Consortium, studying the microbiome in the context of bacterial vaginosis, trichomoniasis, and pregnancy. Currently, her postdoctoral research, conducted in Dr. Melissa Herbst-Kralovetz’s lab, focuses on conditions such as chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, adenomyosis, cervical and endometrial cancer, utilizing multi-omic pipelines, microbial culturomics, and 3D epithelial cell models. Dr. Jimenez has demonstrated a strong commitment to academic excellence, evidenced by recently securing the American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship, publishing manuscripts in microbiology and clinically focused journals, and receiving the 2025 University of Arizona Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar Award. Driven by her passions for science, advocacy, and mentorship—having guided 22 students across various levels—she is actively preparing for a transition to an independent faculty position to continue her translational work on understudied gynecologic conditions through the lens of the microbiome. A recent article can be found here.
The collection is led by senior editor, and principal investigator of the Microbiome Stewardship group, Dr. Kieran O’Doherty, and will feature invited contributions. Starting with the foundational framework paper, the collection establishes clear guiding principles, premises, core responsibilities, and case studies for preserving microbial biodiversity across diverse habitats. The featured research will span multiple disciplines, to address how the deterioration of microbiomes in many environments leads to adverse health outcomes for humans, animals, plants, and entire ecosystems. Importantly, the open-access articles call for unified sociopolitical action and policy-driven governance to integrate microbiome conservation into global public health and environmental protection standards.
Events will be hosted January – December in 2026, on the last Wednesday of every month, 11:00 – 13:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
New this year: the live session will be available free, but the on-demand video-recording will only be available to MSE members for the first year (and available to the public afterwards).
Summary:
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic we, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe obtained her BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of London, and her PhD in Molecular Microbiology through an industrial partnership with Public Health England. Emma started her faculty career at the University of Calgary in 2005, with a Fellow-to-Faculty transition award through CAG/AstraZeneca and CIHR, to study the normal microbes of the human gut. In particular, she was among the few that focused on trying to culture these ‘unculturable’ microbes in order to better understand their biology. To do this, she developed a model gut system to emulate the conditions of human and other animal guts and allow communities of microbes to grow together, as they do naturally. Emma moved her lab to the University of Guelph in late 2007, and has been a recipient of several awards (through the Canada Foundation for Innovation) that have allowed her to develop her specialist anaerobic fermentation laboratory further. Emma is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, and her lab studies many microbial ecosystems, including those of Indigenous people of the Amazon, people in the industrialized world suffering from chronic disease, and those of honey bees and native pollinator insect species of Canada. Her faculty page is here.
Sometimes dreams do come true – I am finally getting a chance to visit New Zealand, thanks to my new role as co-Vice-Chair of the Ethics, Conservation and Management Planning Working Group (other Co-Vice Chair is Louis-Patrick Haraoui) of the new Microbial Conservation Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC MCSG ECMP). While the number of words in that group’s formal name implies that it’s going to take a long time to accomplish anything, the new MCSG group is actually a nimble collaboration of researchers and policy makers who are working on conserving the microbial communities that allow us to thrive on this planet.
Created in 2025 and led by Drs. Jack Gilbert and Raquel Peixoto, the MCSG is the first IUCN body dedicated to protecting all microbial ecosystems, including those which are at risk or already losing microbial diversity because of degradation and human activities, and those ecosystems where human activities have not yell fully changed the microbial communities. The group is working to integrate microbial biodiversity into mainstream conservation frameworks by developing new tools for assessment, advancing policy inclusion, coordinating action across ecosystems, and developing strategies to bring attention to the need to consider microbes in the health of organisms and ecosystems.
This August, the global microbial ecology community is converging on Auckland, New Zealand, for the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) conference. You might remember my last visit two years ago to the ISME conference in Cape Town, South Africa, when I was fortunate enough to have the federal funding to bring much of my lab group. New Zealand hosts stunning landscapes, and not just because of the geography: New Zealand is one of the global leaders in environmental, animal, and plant conservation thanks to its deeply rooted Indigenous conservation practices. Auckland will provide the perfect backdrop for discussing the microscopic worlds that keep our planet alive. Attending ISME is always a highlight for me, and I’m excited to hear about wild animal microbiomes, and generally about the effects of environments on host microbiomes while I’m there.
Beyond the main conference sessions, the highlight of this trip will be participating in the meetings of the Microbial Conservation Specialist Group. While historic conservation efforts were constrained by resources and public attention to focus on visible and adorable wildlife like mammals and birds, protecting microbial diversity is just as critical for maintaining ecosystem stability and resilience. Engaging with this specialist group offers a vital platform to advocate for the inclusion of fungi, bacteria, and archaea in global conservation policies and frameworks. This journey promises to be a powerful blend of cutting-edge science and meaningful advocacy, and I cannot wait to bring these insights back to the research collaborations I have developed over the past few years on Microbiome Stewardship, how to go about it, and the practicality of protecting microbes at different scales.
Opportunities to learn more about the MCSG at ISME
Please visit the MCSG website for more information, and if you are at ISME20, reach visit the Applied Microbiology International publications display table to learn more and join an information session.
If you will be attending ISME20 and would like to meet with me for coffee to learn more about the MCSG group, please email me at sue.ishaq@maine.edu!
Opportunities to learn more about the Microbes and Social Equity working group ISME
Of course, I will also be representing the MSE group at ISME. While I did not have time to prepare a formal event there, if you are part of MSE and would like to meet for coffee, or if you are curious about the group and would like to learn more (also while drinking coffee), please let me know at sue.ishaq@maine.edu!
Events will be hosted January – December in 2026, on the last Wednesday of every month, 11:00 – 13:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
New this year: the live session will be available free, but the on-demand video-recording will only be available to MSE members for the first year (and available to the public afterwards).
Summary:
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic we, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe obtained her BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of London, and her PhD in Molecular Microbiology through an industrial partnership with Public Health England. Emma started her faculty career at the University of Calgary in 2005, with a Fellow-to-Faculty transition award through CAG/AstraZeneca and CIHR, to study the normal microbes of the human gut. In particular, she was among the few that focused on trying to culture these ‘unculturable’ microbes in order to better understand their biology. To do this, she developed a model gut system to emulate the conditions of human and other animal guts and allow communities of microbes to grow together, as they do naturally. Emma moved her lab to the University of Guelph in late 2007, and has been a recipient of several awards (through the Canada Foundation for Innovation) that have allowed her to develop her specialist anaerobic fermentation laboratory further. Emma is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, and her lab studies many microbial ecosystems, including those of Indigenous people of the Amazon, people in the industrialized world suffering from chronic disease, and those of honey bees and native pollinator insect species of Canada. Her faculty page is here.
I’m delighted to announce the publication of a new article that lays the foundation for assessing and implementing goals for good stewardship of microbial communities. Microbiomes are vital for the health of humans, animals, plants, and the planet, providing key metabolic and ecological functions, but. it’s not easy to decide how to preserve or care for them, who should be responsible, and how to know the strategy succeeded. Microbiome stewardship (MiSt) is a strategic, evidence-based approach to maintaining microbial biodiversity and functions across habitats to support health and ecosystem stability. The paper provides guidance on setting up partnerships, assessing microbial communities, outlying goals for stewardship strategies, and thinking about the long-term benefits of maintaining microbial communities for environmental and public health. Led by Kieran O’Doherty, who leads the Microbiome Stewardship research group, the paper features authors from that core group as well as other researchers who have joined the group, and in doing so, co-developed and helped us refine our ideas.
The guidelines paper is now published in the scientific journal Sustainable Microbiology. It will join our recently published paper, “Microbes first into the life rafts: preserving microbiomes to secure health in degrading ecosystems” in a special collection (opening soon – details to follow) curated by some of the MiSt team to highlight invited research or policy case studies. These case studies will vary from topics ranging from dietary additives and effect on gut microbiomes and cancer risk, to how undersized culverts restrict salt water marshes’ chemistry and microbiology, to the way that design and evaluate microbiome studies.
Authors: O’Doherty KC, Beijbom M, Allen-Vercoe E, Choudoir MJ, Silva DS, Bonilla C, Debelius J, Elton S, Hauptmann AL, Heyland A, Morar N, Skillings D, Sun Z, Wolf PM, Beiko RG, Ishaq SL.
Abstract: Microbiomes are essential for ecosystem, plant, animal, and human health. There is accumulating evidence that changes to microbiomes from anthropogenic activities are associated with adverse health outcomes. Despite this evidence and calls for action, almost no oversight mechanisms exist to protect microbiomes or their key functions, in part due to uncertainty about what to protect, and how. We have previously proposed microbiome stewardship as a foundational concept that can act across policy domains to facilitate the ongoing presence of key microbial communities and their functions. The purpose of this article is to provide a working definition of microbiome stewardship and develop guiding principles to support its implementation. The concept of microbiome stewardship is relevant to a wide range of policy domains, such as public health, clinical care, environmental protection, food production, and agriculture. Nonetheless, the implementation of microbiome stewardship will be highly specific, as it needs to be guided by considerations of microbial habitat, objectives of stewardship, and available opportunities for intervention. Accordingly, aligning stewardship responsibility with specific institutions and governance mechanisms will be context dependent. We conclude with a discussion that situates microbiome stewardship relative to other initiatives.
Highlights
Accumulating evidence suggests that some human-induced changes to microbiomes are linked to adverse health outcomes in hosts and ecosystems.
We develop guiding principles of microbiome stewardship that comprise a set of premises, responsibilities, and practices aimed at maintaining microbial biodiversity and microbiome functioning across microbial habitats.
The premises of microbiome stewardship include knowledge that is necessary to understand the foundational roles of microbiomes for the health of organisms and ecosystems.
The responsibilities of microbiome stewardship include imperatives for sustaining health of humans and other organisms.
The actions of microbiome stewardship provide guidance for implementing microbiome stewardship goals in practice.
Events will be hosted January – December in 2026, on the last Wednesday of every month, 11:00 – 13:00 pm ET. Presented over Zoom.
After each talk, we will continue the discussions in an informal social meeting with MSE. All speakers and members of the audience are welcome to join the social meeting.
New this year: the live session will be available free, but the on-demand video-recording will only be available to MSE members for the first year (and available to the public afterwards).
Summary:
Microorganisms are critical to many aspects of biological life, including human health. The human body is a veritable universe for microorganisms: some pass through but once, some are frequent tourists, and some spend their entire existence in the confines of our body tissues. The collective microbial community, our microbiome, can be impacted by the details of our lifestyle, including diet, hygiene, health status, and more, but many are driven by social, economic we, medical, or political constraints that restrict available choices that may impact our health. Access to resources is the basis for creating and resolving social equity—access to healthcare, healthy foods, a suitable living environment, and to beneficial microorganisms, but also access to personal and occupational protection to avoid exposure to infectious disease. This speaker series explores the way that microbes connect public policy, social disparities, and human health, as well as the ongoing research, education, policy, and innovation in this field.
Dr. Sarah Elton is an Assistant Professor and Eakin Chair in Critical Qualitative Health Research Methodology at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She researches at the nexus of food systems, ecosystems and human health, considering the more-than-humans who co-produce health, including microbes. In 2021, she was the first qualitative researcher to be recognized by the Gairdner Foundation when she won a Gairdner Early Career Investigator Award. Previous to her academic career, Sarah worked as a journalist and is the author of two Canadian bestselling nonfiction books, Locavore and Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet. In this presentation, she draws on more-than-human methodologies and her own field work in food systems to explore different ways social scientists can conduct research with microbes. She focuses on how critical qualitative research methodologies can enable scholars to investigate the social and political forces that shape human-microbe relations.
Recently, we celebrated all things microbial at the 2nd Northern New England Microbiome Symposium, which I hosted at UMaine. The first symposium was held at UVM in 2024, and the organizing committee and I are thrilled to see such enthusiasm for keeping this going!
Federico Sisti at the NNE Microbiome Symposium
Microbiomes are fascinating collectives to study! They are found everywhere on the globe and in every ecosystem, they survive in places which are inhospitable to most other forms of life, and their survival strategies challenge us on a daily basis. Whether we are interested in the way coastal wetlands sequester carbon, how diet affects us differently, or how public and environmental health are inextricably linked – research on the microbiome can reveal how systems connect. Microbes ARE cool. But I posit that most of us nerds also like microbiomes because they remind us of ourselves, we thrive in a supportive community and we need to learn from and rely on each other to make that happen. Having just returned from my trips to a seminar in Ghent, a workshop in Venice, and ASM Microbe conference in DC, the importance of camaraderie in science was forefront in my mind and I very much hoped that the symposium would foster community in New England.
Our keynote presentation was “The second messenger cyclic-di-GMP in Bordetella”, showcasing Federico Sisti‘s awesome work understanding how Bordetella bacteria form their biofilms and how we might disrupt that to make them less infectious. He’s also starting work on the extreme microbes that can degrade drilling equipment in the deep ocean. Federico is an Investigator at the Institute of Biotechnology and Molecular Biology of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina, and I have worked with him as a member of the Board of Directors at ASM over the last two years. Starting in July, Federico is the incoming President-Elect at ASM, and the first ASM President representing its global membership! He’s also strongly supportive of science education, and science and policy.
Federico Sisti at the NNE Microbiome Symposium
To showcase amazing microbial communities and the amazing research teams in New England, the rest of the program was made of up speakers from the region.
Dani Brasino told us how she develops better research tools in her lab at UVM, like organ-on-a-chip devices, to better understand how microbes and hosts interact during health and disease. Last October, Dani invited me to present a seminar to the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics program at UVM, where I got to check out her lab and got to catch up with Julie Dragon, Director of the Vermont Biomedical Research Network, in a conversation which set in motion the logistical and financial support that led to me hosting this symposium (VT INBRE provided financial support for more of the symposium). I actually knew of Julie from my days as a graduate student at UVM!
My graduate degree at UVM is also when I met another of the speakers, Scott Tighe, who ran the UVM genomics facility for the last 20 years and helped me when I was working on the moose rumen. Scott presented his work which specializes in working on microbes from extreme environments that are so hard-core in order to survive their hard environment that they are too strong for most of the lysing methods we use to extract DNA and they are so novel they are rarely represented in sequence databases.
Jason Bubier from Jackson Labs told us about his work on addiction and how the microbiome might influence that, and vice versa. He found that there is a microbial signature that correlates to the likelihood that a mouse will become addicted to a substance or not.
Carlotta Dao told us about her work on food insecurity impacting health and gut microbiomes. As an interdisciplinary scientist focused on obesity research, she investigates the interplay of cardiometabolic risks, dietary and psychosocial factors, and gut microbiota. She’s also now on the organizing committee for the next NNE symposium which we hope will be in New Hampshire!
Amber Benezra, told us about her anthropology and bioethnography work on human microbiomes, and how everything that makes us human makes our microbiomes what they are. Any Microbes and Social Equity fans might recognize Amber from our board of directors and the incredible work she’s done with us.
Anna O’Brien told us how plants need their microbiomes and how we can help by curating them. Anna hosted me at UNH a few years ago to present my work, and now she’s on the organizing committee for the next NNE symposium which we hope will be in New Hampshire!
Heather Richard at the NNE Microbiome Symposium
Heather Richard told us how restricting coastal waterways can impact microbiomes in salt marshes in Maine. Heather has been working for years on cataloguing salt marsh microbiomes and their chemistry, understanding how infrastructure can affect these, and creating an interactive hub for this data to allow people to access the info and use it to make informed decisions about restoration or new infrastructure.
Caitlin Howell, engineer extraordinaire, told us how to beat extreme microbes in a fight, using her work on creating surfaces that control microbes to prevent infections. She designs new research tools that better represent biological tissues or the medical implants that go in them, in order to develop strategies for controlling biofilms and infections.
Sprinkled among the academic research talks were the talks from industry vendors, which included information on their products and services, as well as how this is used in action. For example, Chris showed us how data science could be easier with a demo on the OneCodex software, and examples of how it can be used to teach an introduction to microbiomes and data analysis. Siva showed us how reagents from New England Biolabs had been used to improve the tracking and reproducibility of results of infectious diseases in wastewater.
Similarly, Kevin Joseph from Qiagen (shown left), and Jennifer Mosher from Illumina, told us how to make our lab work easier.
Sam White, who works at the Quality Control Collaboratory (QC2) at University of Southern Maine, told us how her work enables food safety and quality control for brewers.
At the end of the day, we continued the conversations while checking out the different posters presenting research from guts to soils to loons. The poster session was a wonderful place for undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and researchers to present their work-in-progress and get feedback from colleagues. The poster session was perhaps my favorite part of the day, because of the passion, creativity, curiosity, and encouragement on display.
On the second day of the symposium, we hosted a data workshop that showcased the trickiness of working with human microbiome data in terms of microbial and human data, such as combining microbiome data with other data types, combining qualitative and quantitative data, learning to evaluate microbiome data using demographic data, dealing with unbalanced groups especially in human microbiomes, and how to choose statistical tests for microbiome projects. Bioinformaticians Kevin Roberge, Laura Jackson, and Lola Holcomb presented case studies on how we integrate information about people into biological and microbiological datasets, and how it is tricky to do it. We followed that with a panel discussion and were joined by Amber Benezra, and after that we had some open working time for data wrangling advice and storyboarding workflows, and this was extremely productive as the attendees broke into groups to get help on their data.
We are grateful to our financial supporters, who helped make this symposium possible and accessible!
We are especially grateful to the Vermont Biomedical Research Network, and the UMaine Institute of Medicine, for making this symposium happen. Their incredible financial support is why we could have an in person meeting instead of online, and I appreciate their patience with the 1000 emails I sent them to help me with organizing this. I am also grateful to Kathy Hill and the Buchanan Alumni Hall Team, and to UMaine Catering!!
Future Microbiome Researcher Sponsors
These incredible sponsors not only helped support this symposium, but their generous donation helped to create several hands-on laboratory workshops to support training in microbiome technology! You can read about the workshops led by Qiagen, New England Biolabs, and Illumina, and we are planning a workshop in Fall 2026 with OneCodex.
The Ishaq Lab 