EPFL 2025 Latsis Symposium
Shaping Microbial Life in a Changing Environment
Tuesday, July 8
08:30 – 09:00
Registrations & Welcome coffee
09:00 – 09:15
Conference Opening & Welcome
Andrew Oates
Session 1: Environmental and ecosystem dynamics
Chair: Omaya Dudin
09:15 – 09:45
Microbial Dynamics in Heterogeneous Subsurface Environments
Joaquin Jimenez-Martinez
09:45 – 10:15
Coral microbiome mining reveals implications of biodiversity loss
Lucas Paoli
10:15 – 10:45
Coffee Break
10:45 – 11:00
Charting cytoskeletal diversity in microbial eukaryotes
Felix Mikus
11:00 – 11:15
The Hydrurus paradox: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Unravel the Ecological Success of a Dominant Primary Producer in Alpine and Arctic Streams
Stefan Eckensperger
11:15 – 11:45
Multiscale imaging of microbial injection systems mediating cell-cell interactions
Martin Pilhofer
11:45 – 13:30
Lunch
Session 2: Motility and the physical environment
Chair: Ben Larson
13:30 – 14:00
Complexity in the behaviour of single-celled eukaryotes
Kirsty Wan
14:00 – 14:15
Fluid flow generates bacterial conjugation hotspots by increasing the rate of shear-driven cell-cell encounters
Jonasz Slomka
14:15 – 14:30
Growth in Low Carbon Conditions Reveals Amino-Acid-Coupled Iron Uptake
Juanita Lara-Gutierrez
14:30 – 15:00
Bacterial motility patterns across species and environmental structure
Jasmine Nirody
15:00 – 15:30
Coffee Break
15:30 – 15:45
Modelling soil as a living system: Feedback between microbial activity and spatial structure
Riz Fernando Noronha
15:45 – 17:00
Public lecture: Can I get that to go? - An Advanced Mobile Lab to enable field-based microbial ecology and cell biology across scales
Niko Leisch
17:00 – 18:30
Poster Session
Wednesday, July 9
Session 3: Cytoskeletal networks evolution and diversity
Chair: Christina Hueschen
09:00 – 09:30
The Mesodinium genus of ciliates as a model system for complex endosymbiosis
Holly Moeller
09:30 – 09:45
Control of regionalized cortical patterning of centrin by SFI1 family scaffolding proteins
Connie Yan
09:45 – 10:00
Centromere evolution: looking inside the cell to understand how new species arise
Jana Helsen
10:00 – 10:30
Evolution and diversity of mitosis
Gautam Dey
10:30 – 11:00
Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:30
Branching morphogenesis in a multicellular choanoflagellate
Thibaut Brunet
11:30 – 12:00
Naegleria amoebae crawl quickly and persistently by blebbing when navigating tight spaces
Katrina Velle
12:00 – 13:30
Lunch
Session 4: Microbial interactions in the environment
Chair: Thibaut Brunet
13:00 – 13:30
Context-dependent interactions between bacterial species
Sara Mitri
13:30 – 13:45
Mating preferences of wild fission yeast strains; how do fission yeasts select a partner?
Sjoerd Seekles
13:45 – 14:00
Building and breaking the symbiosis that sustains coral reefs
Susie McLaren
14:00 – 14:30
Bacillus subtilis in defense mode: Switch-like adaptations to protistan predation
Jordi van Gestel
14:30 – 15:00
Coffee Break
15:00 – 15:30
Anaerobic protists as a one-stop shop for hydrogen-consuming bacteria
Courtney Stairs
15:30 – 15:45
How antibiotics influence bacterial competition
Camille Goemans
15:45 – 16:00
Engineering an open culture system to investigate the role of microbial communities from Lake Geneva in enteric virus inactivation
Laura Morales Duran
16:00 – 16:30
Symbiotic capacity in bloom-forming algae
Flora Vincent
16:30 – 17:00
Q&A with PRX Life Editor
Serena Bradde
17:00 – 18:30
Panel Discussion: "Wild cells: Challenges and opportunites for discovery"
19:00
Conference Dinner
Thursday, July 10
Session 5: Specialized structures and behaviors in cells
Chair: Guillermina Ramirez-San-Juan
09:00 – 09:30
Supergiant cannibal cell formation by regulated development
Ben Larson
09:30 – 09:45
Wild Diatom Pyrenoids: An Icelandic Case Study
Manon Demulder
09:45 – 10:15
Gliding motility and host cell invasion by a parasitic protist
Christina Hueschen
10:15 – 10:45
Coffee Break
10:45 – 11:15
The cytoskeleton of Diatoms
Charlotte Aumenier
11:15 – 11:45
Poster Prize & Concluding Remarks
12:00
Picnic & Sampling Excursion on Lake Geneva