Featured speakers include François P. Douillard from the University of Helsinki, Paula Salgado from The University of Newcastle, Johann Peltier from The University of Paris-Saclay, and Maja Rupnik from the National Laboratory for Health, Environment, and Food.

The webinar link will be sent out an hour before the start time (13:00 GMT) so please ensure you are signed up before then!

A little about our guest speakers:

• François P. Douillard, the University of Helsinki, Finland
  François is currently a university researcher investigating C. botulinum neurotoxin production and sporulation. Prior to joining Prof. Miia Lindström's group, he studied and worked with Prof. Willem de Vos (University of Helsinki, Finland), Prof. Douwe van Sinderen (University College Cork, Ireland), and Prof. Paul O’Toole (University College Cork, Ireland), where he explored different mechanisms and strategies developed by bacteriophages and gut bacteria to interact with their environment.


• Maja Rupnik, National Laboratory for Health, Environment, and Food, Slovenia
  Maja Rupnik is the Head of the Department for microbiological research at NLZOH (National laboratory for health, environment, and food) in Maribor, Slovenia. At the Faculty of Medicine, University of Maribor, she teaches medical and dental students. Clostridium difficile is one of her main research interests since her Ph.D. in 1998. Her research group works on the environmental aspect of C. difficile, in the development of methods for C. difficile isolation from various reservoirs, and in genomic aspects of interspecies variation in C. difficile. Other research topics cover gut microbiota and molecular epidemiology of various antibiotic-resistant pathogens from the One Health perspective. She leads the Organizing Committee of the International C. difficile Symposium (ICDS) organized every two or three years in Slovenia. Since 2023, she is Editor-in-Chief of Anaerobe journal.


• Johann Peltier, University of Paris-Saclay, France
  Johann’s scientific training has been in molecular biology and microbial genetics. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Paris-Saclay (France) within the “regulatory RNAs in Clostridia” (UMR9198) group at the Institute for the Integrative Biology of the Cell (CNRS, France). He has worked in the field of Clostridioides difficile fundamental research for more than 15 years. He has detailed knowledge and expertise in the physiopathology, as well as in the genetic manipulation of C. difficile. Within his current research, Johann is interested in identifying new factors involved in the pathophysiology of C. difficile with an emphasis on the role of regulatory RNAs.


• Paula Salgado, The University of Newcastle, England
  Dr. Salgado is a structural biologist and biochemist interested in proteins associated with pathogenicity and disease. After a Ph.D. at STRUBI, Oxford, and postdoctoral experience at Birkbeck and Imperial College London, she established and leads the C. difficile Structural Microbiology group at Newcastle University. Her lab focuses on detailed structural and functional characterisation of proteins involved in key pathogenicity pathways in a major human pathogen, Clostridioides difficile, now the most prevalent hospital-acquired infection in the UK. Combining biochemistry, microbiology, and structural approaches, they study C. difficile spores and surface proteins.

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