BISMiS Live 2024

Biosketch: Svetlana N. Dedysh received her PhD in 1990 from The Moscow State University and joined the Laboratory of Soil Microbiology and Biokinetics at the Winogradsky Institute of Microbiology, where she started her research on methane oxidizing bacteria in northern wetlands. This research was carried out in a close collaboration with the Center for Microbial Ecology at The Michigan State University, USA, and the Max-Planck-Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Germany. In 2005, Svetlana N. Dedysh defended her Doctoral dissertation on acidophilic methanotrophic bacteria. Since 2008, she is the head of the laboratory of Molecular ecology and phylogenomics of bacteria at the Winogradsky Institute of Microbiology, Research Center of Biotechnology of Russian Academy of Science. Her main field of research is the microbiology of northern wetlands and bacterial systematics. Areas of research expertise are: 1) biology, diversity and ecology of methane-oxidizing bacteria; 2) characterization of bacteria from poorly studied phyla – Acidobacteria and Planctomycetes; 3) microbial diversity in Sphagnum-dominated wetlands; 4) cultivation, genome analysis and taxonomic description of novel bacteria. She is an author of more than 170 research and review articles (Scopus Profile). Since 2014, she is a trustee of Bergey's Manual Trust and one of the editors of Bergey’s Manual of Systematics of Archaea and Bacteria. She was appointed as a member of the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes (ICSP) and served as a member of the Judicial Commission of ICSP in 2014-2023. She is also an ambassador of the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) in Russian Federation.

Biosketch: Phil Hugenholtz is a microbiologist who has focused his career on sequence-based culture-independent analysis of microorganisms. Career highlights include the discovery and characterisation of several previously unrecognised major archaeal and bacterial lineages, and development of sequence-based taxonomic databases for prokaryotes, firstly using the 16S rRNA gene (Greengenes) and more recently using genome sequences (Genome Taxonomy Database).

Biosketch: Nelson Lima got his Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences (Biotechnology) from the University of Minho (Braga, Portugal) and in 2004 he was appointed Full Professor at the University of Minho. His primary research is related to food and environmental mycology with the integration of polyphasic approaches, including mycotoxins, for fungal identification. Since 1996 he has been the head of the Micoteca da Universidade do Minho (MUM) fungal culture collection and currently, he was the President of ECCO/European Culture Collections’ Organisation from 2013 to 2019. Previously he served, as a Collection Officer on the ECCO Board, and then the World Federation of Culture Collection Executive Board. He is an Invited Professor at different Brazilian Universities and Milan-Bicocca University in Italy. He was the coordinator of IS_MIRRI21 European project and was responsible for hosting the MIRRI statutory seat in Portugal (UMinho). He is one of the leaders of the Portuguese Microbiological Resource Centre Network and the National Node Coordinator of MIRRI- ERIC. He has long experience as an international evaluator of diverse international funding agencies, in outstanding scientific journals (where has been also associate editor), in led and been a partner of several European, Brazilian, and other International research projects, as well as participating in working groups from OECD, FAO, EU, etc. So far, he has mentored 21 post-doc researchers and supervised 27 PhD and 35 MSc theses. Currently, he supervises 4 PhD thesis. He published more than 400 publications and presented more than 600 conferences and communications. In 2016, he was granted the title of Professor Honoris Causa by the University Federal of Pernambuco (Recife, Brazil). More recently, a new fungal species was named in recognition of his contribution to the mycology field with Penicillium limae.

Biosketch: Professor Cobus M. Visagie is a researcher at the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI) at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He earned his Ph.D. from Stellenbosch University in 2012, followed by postdoctoral positions at the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute and the Ottawa Research and Development Centre – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. His research focuses primarily on Aspergillus, Penicillium, Talaromyces, and other molds, delving into their biodiversity, ecology, phylogenetics, nomenclature, taxonomy, and identification. He places special emphasis on conducting taxonomically robust ecological and biodiversity studies. Professor Visagie has contributed significantly to the field, publishing 64 peer-reviewed articles on these topics. Notably, he made a pivotal impact on the international mycological community by creating and curating 'accepted species' lists for Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Talaromyces. Before these groundbreaking publications, identifying species within these genera presented substantial challenges. In addition to his research, he serves on the editorial boards of Studies in Mycology, Mycological Progress, and Fungal Systematics and Evolution (FUSE). Furthermore, he holds elected memberships in the International Commission on the Taxonomy of Fungi (ICTF) and the International Commission on Penicillium and Aspergillus (ICPA).

Biosketch: Kamlesh Jangid is a trained microbiologist with a special interest in microbial systematics and ecology, and soil science. Dr. Jangid completed his education in Microbiology from the University of Pune in 2005 with a Ph.D. from the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS). His post doctorate in soil microbial ecology was with Prof. William Whitman at The University of Georgia (UGA), Athens USA. He returned to NCCS as a Scientist in 2011 to build the world’s largest microbial culture collection, the National Centre for Microbial Resource (NCMR). In July 2023, he joined ARI as a full-time Scientist in the Bioenergy group and as the Curator in-charge of MACS Collection of Microorganisms (MCM). His lab at ARI is using conventional microbiology and modern next-generation methods to study microbial life, understanding its ecological role with an eventual aim of developing microbial strategies for a sustainable environment. Dr. Jangid is well known across academia and serves several key positions. He has published >65 articles, some of which are the most cited articles in Soil Science. He is the Editor of Soil Biology and Biochemistry since 2016, and for PLoS and Frontiers journals since 2018. He is a nominated full member of the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes (ICSP) since 2024. He was the founding charter member of BISMiS. He served the Society as a secretary from 2014-2018, then as President-elect from 2018-2020 and as its President from 2021-2023. For his distinguished professional achievements, Dr. Jangid was awarded an honorary Academic Advisor appointment by the China Agricultural University, Beijing in 2018.

Biosketch: Lorena Carro received her Ph.D. from the University of Salamanca working on endophytic actinobacteria in 2009. She has spent several years at the University of Lyon – CNRS (France) working on first steps of the interaction between Frankia and actinorhizal plants and then she moved to the University of Newcastle (UK) to focus on the study of genomic information of actinobacteria and the application of this information to taxonomy. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Genetics at the University of Salamanca. Her main research areas of study include microbial ecology, genomics, and taxonomy. She has been focused for years on plant-bacteria interactions and the diversity associated with those systems, including soils, rhizosphere and plant associated microorganisms. Now she is studying the microorganisms from extreme environments and their application to fight climate change in agricultural systems. She has been associate editor of Bergey’s Manual of Systematics of Archaea and Bacteria (2019-2023) and for Frontiers in Microbiology (2015-2017) and IJSEM (2018-2023) journals. She is a member at large of the executive board of BISMiS.

Biosketch: Dr. Raúl Riesco holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from the University of Salamanca, specializing in comparative genomics and microbial diversity. His research focuses on plant-microorganism interactions and prokaryotic phylogenomics, with over 22 publications and involvement in two research projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. In the field of systematics and taxogenomics, he has contributed significantly to the classification of microbial taxa, particularly within the phylum Actinomycetota and the genus Micromonospora. In March 2024, he co-authored an update with Prof. Martha Trujillo to the 2018 proposal for minimal standards in the use of genome data for prokaryotic taxonomy, a highly cited paper in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM). In this session, Dr. Riesco will highlight the main points from this updated proposal.

Biosketch: Marilize Le Roes-Hill obtained a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology in 2005 from the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, under the supervision of Dr Paul Meyers. This was followed by three years of postdoctoral research at Chemical Engineering, UCT, and two years at the Biocatalysis and Technical Biology (BTB) Research Group, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), under the mentorship of Prof. Stephanie Burton. In 2011, she took over the leadership of the BTB Research Group, which later merged with other teams to ultimately form the Applied Microbial and Health Biotechnology Institute (AMHBI). She is an Associate Professor in Biotechnology, the deputy director of AMHBI, and the CPUT Research Focus Area leader in bioeconomy and Biotechnology. She is a review Editor for Frontiers in Catalysis (Biocatalysis), a Section Editor for Data in Brief, and the Royal Society of South Africa Newsletter Editor. Her research interests are focused on understanding actinobacteria diversity associated with different types of environments, the discovery of novel natural products and industrially relevant enzymes, and the potential application of these enzymes in biocatalysis, and in the biodegradation of natural and synthetic polymers. This work has resulted in national and international collaboration research networks, mainly on the European and African continents. For more details, please visit Marilize's ORCiD profile.