• Speakers

Daniel McMillan is an instrument and applications specialist, and is now the Business Development Manager for the food and environmental markets throughout Europe and beyond.

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Katarina Belovari ia an expert assistant for industrial microbiology in A&B.

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Vanda Juranić Lisnić is Assistant professor at the Department for Histology and embryology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Rijeka.  Her work focuses on the pathogenesis and immune responses to cytomegalovirus.

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Prof. Schrempf has pioneered many aspects of molecular genetics and biology of streptomycetes, abundant soil bacteria having a complex life-style.

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Prof. Cuevas’s work focuses on the epidemiology and diagnosis of infectious diseases in the tropics, particularly in tuberculosis, diarrhea and respiratory infections.

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Dušica Vujaklija works at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, Croatia. Currently her research group is investigating the functions, interactions and temporal expression of genes important for DNA metabolism and chromosome segregation during the reproductive phase. In addition they are investigating an unusual class of lipolytic enzymes produced by streptomycetes and other Actinobacteria from various ecological niches.

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Igor Jurak is a head of the Laboratory for molecular virology at the University of Rijeka studying non-coding RNAs in herpesviruses.

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Dr. Anthony works at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam, focused on the identification and detection of antibiotic resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

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Prof. Dr. Maja Ravnikar is the Head of the Department of Biotechnology and Systems Biology at the National Institute of Biology (NIB), Slovenia.

Her main expertise is the study of host-pathogen interaction, development of novel diagnostic methods for detection of pathogens (viruses, bacteria) and innovative approaches for purification of viruses and other biotechnological applications.

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Dr. Attila Gacser is an Associate Professor at the Department of Microbiology, University of Szeged, Hungary where he is the Head of the EMBO-Candida Research Group and he is also a Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Current research in his laboratory focuses on the development of tools for genetic manipulation of C. parapsilosis and the study of Candida virulence and pathogenesis, host response and immunology of fungal infections.

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Dr. Suzana Hađina is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases with Clinic, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zagreb.

Her scientific interest areas include Malassezia yeast in animals and innate immune responses to gram negative bacteria and endotoxins.

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Dr. Angela Sessitsch is Head of the Business Unit of AIT – Austrian Institute of Technology and president of Austrian Association for Molecular Life Sciences and Biotechnology.

Her main research interest is the interaction of bacterial endophytes with plants and the development of applications based on beneficial plant-microbe interactions. Her additional areas of interest include functional metagenomics of microbial communities to identify novel bioactive substances and the development of diagnostic tools for microbial typing, detection and quantification.

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Dr. Ivan-Krešimir Svetec is an Associate Professor at Laboratory for Biology and Microbial Genetics, Department of Biochemical Engineering, Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology, University of Zagreb. His scientific interests are molecular genetics and genome stability and targeted genetic modification of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and non-Saccharomyces yeasts.

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Dr. Hrvoje Petković holds a position of associate professor of microbial biotechnology at the Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana. He has over 20 years experience in microbial biotechnology, metabolic and biosynthetic engineering and drug discovery.

His expertise extends to the industrial strain improvement, process development, expertise in secondary metabolite gene regulation, mostly focused on actinomycetes hosts producing medically important drugs such as antibacterial tetracyclines and macrolides (erythromycin), immunosuppressant FK506 and anticancer rapamycin.

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Assist. Prof. Mirna Mrkonjić Fuka is the Head of the Department of Microbiology at the Faculty of Agriculture University of Zagreb, Croatia.

The main areas of her scientific interest are analysis of functional and structural diversity of bacterial communities in complex ecosystems (especially artisan food products), molecular typing of lactic acid bacteria and analysis regarding to sources of antibiotic resistance in food chain.

Currently her working group focuses on the bacterial diversity of game meat sausages (applying culture dependent and independent microbiological tools) and on characterization and selection of food beneficial microbiota for the application as bioprotective cultures.

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Cristina Marzachì is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection, CNR, Torino.

Her research interests focus on evaluation of i) virus and phytoplasma infection  on grapevine berry production, ii) factors influencing Flavescence dorée (FD) epidemics and possible strategies to overcome them, iii) effects of  elicitors of resistance / tolerance to phytoplasmas infections both on a phytoplasma model system as well as on the FD system, iv) role of phytoplasma membrane proteins in determining vector specific transmission of the pathogen.

At the moment, she is working on transcriptomic analyses of the interaction with plant and vector of ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris’ (chrysanthemum yellows isolate) and FD phytoplasma, in the model system ‘Arabidopsis thaliana – Euscelidius variegatus’

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Maja Rupnik is head of Department for microbiological research at National laboratory for health, environment and food (NLZOH) in Maribor, Slovenia. Also, since 2005 she has been a Professor for Microbiology at Faculty of Medicine, University of Maribor.

Her research interest is focused on molecular biology and epidemiology of Clostridium difficile, molecular typing techniques and on gut microbiota. The main interest of her group are the variant C. difficile strains.

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