Special Seminar: Systems Ecology of The Microbiome-gut-brain Axis: The Example of Parkinson’s Disease
Speaker
Paul Wilmes
Head, Integrative Molecular Biomedicine Department
Deputy Head, Systems Biomedicine Department
Principal Investigator, Eco-Systems Biology Research Group
Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine
University of Luxembourg
Hosted by Dr. Edward Fon (ted.fon [at] mcgill.ca)
Speaker Bio
Paul Wilmes is Associate Professor of Systems Ecology at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg. He obtained his PhD in 2006 from the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK), a part of his doctoral research having been conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen (Germany). After three years of postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley (USA), he returned to his native Luxembourg in early 2010 through an ATTRACT Fellowship of the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR). He initially established his research group at the Centre de Recherche Public – Gabriel Lippmann but later joined the LCSB.
Paul’s main primary research focus is on using Systems Biology approaches to identify key functionalities of microbial communities including human associated microbiota. His group has pioneered appropriate methodologies for carrying out systematic molecular measurements of microbial consortia over space and time. This allows for example to define lifestyle strategies of distinct populations and link these to genetic and functional traits. The same approaches allow the study of microbiome-host molecular interactions. In this context, his group has pioneered the development of a microfluidics-based in vitro model of the human-microbial gastrointestinal interface called HuMiX.
Paul has authored more than 80 peer-review publications. He is a frequent invited speaker at international scientific symposia and academic institutions. Paul is a member of several national and international scientific organizations, and he has won several prizes for his scientific work.
