Per joined Ferring Pharmaceuticals in 2015 and was appointed President on January 1st, 2019. Privately-owned, Ferring is a research-driven, speciality biopharmaceutical group committed to helping people around the world build families and live better lives. The company is a leader in reproductive medicine and maternal health, and in speciality areas within gastroenterology and urology. Ferring has been developing treatments for mothers and babies for over 50 years and has a portfolio covering treatments from conception to birth.

Per previously held executive and senior leadership positions in research, medical and clinical development at Novo Nordisk and AstraZeneca. 

For over 30 years, Per has been investigating and evolving microbiome science, from a scientific and application perspective, and has been holding faculty positions at some of the leading institutions to advance research in this field. He has held the role of Associate Professor at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden and the Washington University School of Medicine, USA.

Per has an M.D. degree and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Clinical Chemistry from Gothenburg University, Sweden.

Professor Joseph Borg followed specialised training in Molecular Genetics and Haematology. His research career began in 2004 at the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, Department of Physiology and Biochemistry (University of Malta) as an MSc student and later for his PhD. As part of his doctoral research he unveiled the molecular genetics of the Hereditary Persistence of Foetal Haemoglobin KLF1-related condition (OMIM 613566) and established KLF1 gene as a novel quantitative trait locus for Foetal Haemoglobin (HBFQTL6). He now forms part of an Analysis Working Group at the NASA Gene Lab Multi-omics section, as well as a member of the ESA Space Omics Topical Team.

Professor Borg collaborated with Space Applications Services, and Weill Cornell Medicine PI Chris Mason to launch Malta’s first ever space bioscience mission as part of the MALETH program to the International Space Station in August 2021 aboard SpaceX CRS23. A second mission was also launched with SpaceX CRS25 on June 2022. And a third mission is slated for launch on SpaceX CRS27 this month. He is also involved in investigating the red blood cell haemolysis and anaemia of private astronauts for the SpaceX Polaris Dawn crew first mission. This work is jointly carried out with Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and in collaboration with Mason’s Lab in New York.

Joël is Research Director at INRAE Micalis Institute “Food and Gut Microbiology for Human Health” and Scientific Director of MetaGenoPolis, offering unique expertise in quantitative and functional metagenomics. Gut microbial ecologist by training, Joel pioneered intestinal metagenomics towards food-microbe-host interactions as well as diagnostic applications. With > 38 years of academic & applied research on the microbiome, Joël aims to provide a better understanding of host-microbes symbiosis towards preventive nutrition and precision medicine of the microbial human. Today, Joel is scientific coordinator of the large cohort study ‘le microbiote français - Le French Gut’.

Joel is laureate of the ERC-Advanced Homo.symbiosus and coordinator of EU program human microbiome action. He is co-founder and scientific advisor of Maat-Pharma, a startup company dedicated to provide safe and standardized microbiotherapy solutions for the reconstruction of host-microbes symbiosis in the context of cancer therapy. He is also cofounder of Novobiome and GMT. Member of the BoD of GMfH, he supports the Gut microbiota for health scientific web-platform.

Ross Youngs is an environmental scientist and CEO of Univenture, a full-service designer, manufacturer, and distributor of packaging products used in dozens of industries globally. With more than 75 issued patents to date, the Univenture team is one of the leading providers of sustainable, biodegradable, and reusable plastics that are wholly manufactured in the United States.

In 2012, Young’s founded Biosortia, a biotech company that works on new drugs from deep access to the chemistry of the microbiome for immuno-oncology and immunological therapeutics. Young’s recent major innovations include an R&D 100 Award for collaboration on biopolymer technologies. In 2009, Biosortia was awarded a $6 million ARPA-E (U.S. Dept. of Energy R&D) grant for its algal harvesting technology, which helped lead to the development of Biosortia’s drug discovery platform.

Nina holds a Masters’s degree in agronomy from AgroParisTech, the leading school for life sciences in France, where she specialized in nutrition. She was involved in human and mice lemur nutrition research at Penn State University, USA, the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the National Institute for Agronomic Research (now INRAe).

Nina’s experience in nutraceuticals includes 6 years of successful development of probiotic supplements sales and technical marketing for Probiotical and totals 10 years of technical sales of beneficial bacteria.

Today, she is the international sales & marketing director for the French biotech TargEDys, the ambassador of precision probiotics, harnessing and translating science to products to bring the microbiome to the heart of healthcare. TargEDys is mostly known for EnteroSatys, based on Hafnia alvei HA4597, and its proven efficacy in weight management through the molecular mimicry of the hormone of satiety alpha-MSH by the bacteria metabolite ClpB.

Thomas Soranzo lived in Montreal, Canada, for several years and obtained a degree in cellular and molecular biology from Concordia University. Then, he completed a master’s degree in biotechnology and management at Université Joseph Fourier, in Grenoble, France. Thomas then decided to pursue his education with a Ph. D in biotechnology within a startup company. During his thesis, he discovered a passion for the entrepreneurial world.

His first post-doctorate consisted in developing a medical device, implantable endoscopically in the small intestine, which would modulate the microbiome for therapeutic purposes. During this work came the question of monitoring these changes in situ. With no easy and reliable method, Thomas participated in the design of a patented non-invasive intestinal microbiome sampling device that he continues to develop today within the startup PELICAN HEALTH of which he is co-founder and president.

Virginia Franco CEO of YONI Solutions

MD, Gynecologist.

Virgínia works with woman's health since 2015 and among her experiences she worked in women’s health in primary care, pathologies of the lower genital tract, having worked in the Private care, public attendance and medical emergency departments.

Dr. Virginia Franco, the CEO and co-founder of Yoni Solutions. Yoni Solutions is a Femtech startup based in Switzerland dedicated to improving women’s health through the analysis of the vaginal microbiome.

After her personal experience of a toxic shock syndrome at 18 that left her skin very sensitive, Dr. Elsa Jungman ended up getting her PhD on the skin barrier function and worked at L'Oreal in Paris before moving to San Francisco. While working on the skin microbiome, she learned that 70% of women are suffering from sensitive skin. With no relevant solutions on the market, she decided to start her company to provide the next generation of skin health solutions through microbiome data. Her brand Dr. Elsa Jungman was the first microbiome-friendly line on the market and she recently launched HelloBiome a b2b AI platform to unlock microbiome data for personalization and product innovation.  She was the first woman awarded the French American Entrepreneurship Award.

Rudi Schmidt currently serves as CEO at !mmunetrue, a company that analyzes immunological patterns across diseases and treatments as humans respond systemically to environment, diseases, and treatments. Immunological real-world data have many use cases when curated, analyzed and provided by using artificial intelligence.

Before that, Rudi spent 15 years at Asklepios Hospitals, the 2nd largest hospital chain in Europe, the last 7 years as EVP Precision Medicine, and as CEO of several Asklepios affiliates, including a metagenome company and a provider of RWD and R&D.

With more than ten years of studying the intestinal microbiota and over 5 years developing PharmaBiome as its founding CEO, Tomas is an expert in the microbiome and its place in human health. An engineer with a PhD in biology, Tomas’ broad understanding of the microbiome resulted in the founding of PharmaBiome. With his strong co-founders and team, he established a unique platform technology for target identification and product development in the microbe-based therapeutic field - a novel approach to translating this new modality into therapeutics.

Dr Sioned Fôn Jones is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and co-founder of the biotech start-up BoobyBiome. With a strong academic background in Chemistry and Biophysics, she earned her Master of Chemistry degree from the University of Liverpool, followed by a PhD in Biophysics at King's College London and UCL. During her academic career, Dr Jones conducted pioneering research on DNA origami nanotools, developing new techniques to measure membrane properties in live cells. Her work led to numerous awards at top international conferences, including the Royal Society of Chemistry and Prato Pores in 2021, and her research has been published in several high-impact peer-reviewed journals.

Marie Drago is a Doctor in Pharmacy and the founder of Gallinée, a skincare brand. Before starting her own brand, she worked for various beauty companies and travelled the world. Marie is a self-proclaimed science nerd and loves to attend science congresses and follow science influencers, particularly those who focus on microbiome science. As a pharmacist, she's obsessed with product efficacy and safety and believes that Gallinée's products are special because of their cutting-edge science and proven efficacy.

Ranjan Sinha is the founder and CEO of Digbi Health, a caring & innovative digital therapeutics company committed to reversing polychronic inflammatory illnesses through DNA & Gut Microbiome-based personalization.

Ranjan is passionate about using food and lifestyle as medicine. He successfully addressed his life-threatening cardio-metabolic disorder, which inspired him to help thousands address similar challenges to live healthy, disease-free lives.

Jonathan Scheiman, PhD is a co-founder and the CEO of FitBiomics, a biotechnology startup that is sequencing the microbiome of elite athletes to identify and develop next-generation probiotics for applications in consumer health and nutrition. Jonathan received his PhD in Biomedicine from NYU, with a focus on molecular oncology. He did his postdoctoral fellowship in George Church’s lab at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, at Harvard, where he worked on transformative sequencing technologies and programmable cellular engineering.