Claire M. Fraser is an American genome scientist and microbiologist who has worked in microbial genomics and genome medicine. Her research has contributed to the understanding of the diversity and evolution of microbial life. Fraser is the director of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, where she holds the Dean's Endowed Professorship in the School of Medicine. She has joint faculty appointments at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology/Immunology. In 2019, she began serving a one-year term as President-Elect for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which will be followed by a one-year term as AAAS president starting in February 2020 and a one-year term as chair of the Board of Directors in February 2021.
Farooq Azam is a researcher in the field of marine microbiology. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California San Diego. Farooq Azam grew up in Lahore and received his early education in Lahore. He attended University of Punjab, where he received his B.Sc. in chemistry. He later he received his M.Sc. from the same institution. He then went to Czechoslovakia for higher studies. He received his PhD in microbiology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. After he received his PhD, Farooq Azam moved to California. Azam was the lead author on the paper which coined the term microbial loop. This 1983 paper involved a synthesis between a number of leaders in the (then) young field of microbial ecology, specifically, Azam, Tom Fenchel, J Field, J Gray, L Meyer-Reil and Tron Frede Thingstad.
Microbiology is the scientific study of microorganisms, those being of unicellular (single-celled), multicellular, or acellular. Microbiology encompasses numerous sub-disciplines including virology, bacteriology, protistology, mycology, immunology, and parasitology.
Niyaz Ahmed is an Indian molecular epidemiologist, professor of microbial sciences, genomicist, and a veterinarian by training, based in Hyderabad.
Roberto Kolter is Professor of Microbiology, Emeritus at Harvard Medical School, an author, and past president of the American Society for Microbiology. Kolter has been a professor at Harvard Medical School since 1983 and was Co-director of Harvard's Microbial Sciences Initiative from 2003-2018. During the 35-year term of the Kolter laboratory from 1983 to 2018, more than 130 graduate student and postdoctoral trainees explored an eclectic mix of topics gravitating around the study of microbes. Kolter is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Norman Richard Pace Jr. is an American biochemist, and is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado. He is principal investigator at the Pace lab.
Edward Francis DeLong, is a marine microbiologist and professor in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and is considered a pioneer in the field of metagenomics. He is best known for his discovery of the bacterial use of the rhodopsin protein in converting sunlight to biochemical energy in marine microbial communities.
Karen Nelson is a Jamaican-born American microbiologist who was formerly president of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). On July 6, 2021 she joined Thermo Fisher Scientific as Chief Scientific Officer.
Arturo Casadevall is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Alfred and Jill Sommer Professor and Chair of the W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease research, with a focus on fungal and bacterial pathogenesis and basic immunology of antibody structure-function. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
B. Brett Finlay, is a Canadian microbiologist well known for his contributions to understanding how microbes cause disease in people and developing new tools for fighting infections, as well as the role the microbiota plays in human health and disease. Science.ca describes him as one of the world's foremost experts on the molecular understanding of the ways bacteria infect their hosts. He also led the SARS Accelerated Vaccine Initiative (SAVI) and developed vaccines to SARS and a bovine vaccine to E. coli O157:H7. His current research interests focus on pathogenic E. coli and Salmonella pathogenicity, and the role of the microbiota in infections, asthma, and malnutrition. He is currently the UBC Peter Wall Distinguished Professor and a Professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories, Microbiology and Immunology, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Co-director and Senior Fellow for the CIFAR Humans and Microbes program. He is also co-author of the book Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World and The Whole-Body Microbiome: How to Harness Microbes - Inside and Out - For Lifelong Health. Finlay is the author of over 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals and served as editor of several professional publications for many years.
Nikos Kyrpides is a Greek-American bioscientist who has worked on the origins of life, information processing, bioinformatics, microbiology, metagenomics and microbiome data science. He is a senior staff scientist at the Berkeley National Laboratory, head of the Prokaryote Super Program and leads the Microbiome Data Science program at the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute.
Rup Lal is an Indian molecular biologist known for his work in molecular biology, genomics, metagenomics and taxonomy of microbial diversity inhabiting extreme niches. His research has led to the development of novel analogue of rifamycin, identification and functional characterization of microbial communities at Manikaran hotsprings atop the Himalyan Ranges in Himachal Pradesh and deciphering the role of microbes in degradation of Hexacholorocyclohexane (HCH) at a polluted dumpsite located at Ummari village, Lucknow, India. He has over 45 years of strong and longstanding experience in administration, teaching and research in various capacities at University of Delhi, India. He was ASM Ambassador for India (2012-2015), presently the ISME and FEMS Ambassador to India and Ambassador to International Microbial Literacy Initiative-South Asia Centre. He was a visiting scientist at the University of Cambridge, University of Kaiserslautern, Oregon State University, EPFL, University of Lausanne, ETH-EAWAG, Zurich, CSIRO- Canberra (Australia) and Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig. He is recipient of several prestigious fellowships: Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, DBT- Overseas Fellowship, Indo-US-ASM Professorship in Microbiology, Australian Government Endeavour Executive Fellowship (2018-2019), ASM Moselio Schaechter Distinguished Service Award, Prof. S.R. Vyas Memorial Award, Prof. BN Johri Award, Lifetime Achievement Award from AMI(Association of Microbiologists of India), and Best ISME Ambassador-2022, Editor-in-Chief Indian Journal of Microbiology (2006-2013) and editorial board member- mSystems, ISME- Communication, Environmental-Microbiology/Reports, BMC-Biotechnology/Biochemistry, Microbial-Biotechnology, Indian Journal of Microbiology.
Robin Patel is a Canadian born microbiologist and Elizabeth P. and Robert E. Allen Professor of Individualized Medicine, a Professor of Microbiology, and a Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. She is widely recognized as a leader in the field of clinical microbiology and has held a variety of leadership positions including 2019–2020 President of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and Director of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) Laboratory Center of the National institutes of Health. She is currently the Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the Mayo Clinic, and Director of the Mayo Clinic's Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, where she studies biofilms, antimicrobial resistance, periprosthetic joint infection and diagnostic testing of bacteria.
Abigail A. Salyers was a microbiologist who pioneered the field of human microbiome research. Her work on the bacterial phylum Bacteroidetes and its ecology led to a better understanding of antibiotic resistance and mobile genetic elements. At a time where the prevailing paradigm was focused on E. coli as a model organism, Salyers emphasized the importance of investigating the breadth of microbial diversity. She was one of the first to conceptualize the human body as a microbial ecosystem. Over the course of her 40-year career, she was presented with numerous awards for teaching and research and an honorary degree from ETH Zurich, and served as president of the American Society for Microbiology.
Carol A. Nacy is a microbiologist and immunologist focused on the immune response of bacterial and parasitic disease.
Stephen Joseph Giovannoni is an American microbiologist whose research mainly focuses on marine microbes. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and a founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Marine Science.
Ronald Oremland was an American microbiologist, astrobiologist, and emeritus senior scientist at the United States Geological Survey. He authored over 200 papers on the microbiology of extreme habitats.
Albert Balows was an American clinical microbiologist. He was the president of the American Society for Microbiology in 1981.
Yvonne Lue is a Jamaican doctor who works in the field of medical microbiology. Lue is one of the few Black women who have led clinical microbiology since the 1950-70s. She is the President for the New York City Branch of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).
Pratyoosh Shukla is an Indian Microbiologist specialized in Enzyme technology and Protein Bioinformatics. He is presently working as Professor and Coordinator of the School of Biotechnology at the Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He was awarded with Indo-USA Research Professor at Department of Environmental Health, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, USA in the year 2014 by American Society of Microbiology (ASM) and Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF). He is Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (FNAAS), Fellow of Academy of Microbiological Sciences (FAMSc/FAMI), Fellow of Biotech Research Society of India (FBRS).
