Prof. Meta Roestenberg chaired a session on controlled human infection models, during which PhD student Devika Kalika presented her research on the controlled exposure of healthy volunteers to C. difficile bacteria. Prof. Georg Zeller co-chaired a session exploring the relationship between the gut microbiome and cancer. During this session, PhD student Selin Pekel delivered an engaging presentation on her discovery of a universal gut microbiome signature for colorectal cancer.
On the awards side, former LUCID PhD graduate dr. Sam Nooij received the Westerdijk Award for the best PhD thesis Guardians of the gut: harnessing bioinformatics to study the gut microbiome and faecal microbiota transplantation in intestinal disorders (to be found here). In addition, former member of the Microbiome Systems Biology group dr. Quinten Ducarmon received the Van Leeuwenhoek Award for best post-doc paper Metagenomic global survey and in-depth genomic analyses of Ruminococcus gnavus reveal differences across host lifestyle and health status published in Nature Communications in 2025.