BiomeFUN 2025

Dr. Dimkić has been involved as a project leader of several international and national projects, while from 2021, he became the head of the Innovation Project "Smart Bio Fertilizer'' within the Mini-Grants Program, Innovation Fund of the Republic of Serbia, Science Technology Park Belgrade, thanks to which he founded the startup company BioCombact. Additionally, the Dr. Dimkić is involved in various projects funded by companies and enterprises from the R&D sector regarding the development of smart solutions for sustainable agriculture. The team of Dr. Dimkić have nearly two decades of experience in the field of applied and environmental microbiology, and biotechnological potential in biological control and plant protection. Dr. Dimkić has significant experience in microbial isolation and identification, and an excellent knowledge of microbial diversity in different habitats, including plant-pathogen interactions.

Also, he is a proven scientist in the field of applied microbiology and biocontrol strategies, including knowledge of state-of-the-art sequencing techniques of microbiomes and whole genomes. Additionally, Dr. Dimkić has complementary expertise to the biotechnological background and collaboration with many industrial partners. Dr. Dimkić is among 10% of the excellent researchers in Serbia for the period from 2018-2022, and third on the list in his category.

Dr. Juan Diaz-Colunga is a Junior Group Leader at the Asturian Institute of Lactic Products (IPLA-CSIC) in Oviedo, Spain. He completed his post- and pre-doctoral training at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and the Spanish National Center for Biotechnology.

He is broadly interested in the fields of systems biology, evolutionary genetics, and microbial ecology. Most recently, his work has aimed to develop mathematical frameworks to model interactions between biological components, from genes within a genome to species within an ecosystem. He uses a combination of experimental, theoretical, and computational methods to address fundamental questions on how populations and communities of (micro)organisms evolve, respond to perturbations, and carry out biotechnologically-relevant functions.

Dr. Dragićević leverages his foundation in plant biochemistry through biological data analysis. His research focuses on nitrogen assimilation (how plants take up and use nitrogen), secondary metabolism (the unique compounds plants produce), and specific plant proteins (hydroxyproline-rich glycoproteins). He has contributed to several national and international projects, including notable initiatives like TERPMED and CHIC, which aimed to identify and explore the production of bioactive compounds by plants.

Dr. Dragićević specializes in processing large-scale data from sequencing and mass spectrometry, focusing on the relationship between molecular structure and function. Currently, he applies these data handling and analytical approaches to automate and standardize workflows for clinical trial data.

Dr. Karel Olavarría holds a background in Biology, with research focused on elucidating the operational logic of microbial metabolism. By integrating theoretical approaches—including kinetic, stoichiometric, and thermodynamic modeling—with experimental techniques such as molecular biology, enzyme kinetics, analytical biochemistry, and microbial physiology, he has investigated various aspects of metabolism in both pure and mixed microbial cultures.

Dr. Timothy Páez-Watson is a microbial systems biologist with a passion for both research and education. He earned his PhD in Environmental Biotechnology from Delft University of Technology, where he studied microbial communities in dynamic environments. His work combines molecular techniques, computational approaches, and systems thinking to better understand and harness microbiomes for sustainable applications.

Alongside his research, he is an enthusiastic educator, known for developing engaging and practice-based learning experiences in microbiology and biotechnology. He was recently awarded “Teacher of the Year” for his innovative and student-centered teaching approach. He is committed to supporting early-career researchers and promoting interdisciplinary collaboration in science and education.

Dr. Esposito has contributed to various projects in environmental microbiology and microbial genomics, including the characterization of alpine spring water and plant-associated microbiomes under both healthy and diseased conditions.

His current research focuses on leveraging bioinformatics approaches to address complex biological questions in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems.

Dr. Shetty is a postdoctoral researcher at the Matthias-Schleiden-Institut in Germany, working within the Cluster of Excellence "Balance of the Microverse." He has a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Szeged, Hungary.

Dr. Shetty's research explores microbial interactions in algal systems, wastewater remediation, and biogas microbiomes, leveraging omics technologies to uncover the molecular dialogues shaping these complex ecosystems.

Dr. João Pedro Saraiva is a Senior Scientist in the Microbial Interaction Ecology Group at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig, Germany. With a strong background in bioinformatics and microbial ecology, his work focuses on understanding complex microbial systems, particularly microbial interactions driven by functional complementarity and whole-genome sequencing approaches. Dr. Saraiva earned his PhD in Bioinformatics from the Faculty of Medicine, Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, and holds an MSc in Bioinformatics from the Institute of Biotechnology and Bioengineering at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal.

He also holds a degree in Biotechnology Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança. He previously worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in the Microbial Systems Bioinformatics group at UFZ, and as a Research Associate at the University of Minho. His current research is centered on the risk assessment of low-risk pesticides (RATION) and improving the identification and characterization of soil protists.

Dr. Bajić works at the interface of microbial community ecology, systems biology, and biotechnology. His research group at the Department of Biotechnology, TU Delft (The Netherlands) aims to develop predictive models for how microbial communities assemble and function. Ultimately, the goal is to translate these fundamental insights to engineer microbiomes for practical applications in biotechnology and agriculture.

Before joining TU Delft, Djordje trained at the National Center for Biotechnology (Spain), Biological Research Center (Hungary), and at Yale University (USA), where he helped lead efforts to develop new metabolic modeling tools and integrate them with experimental studies of microbial communities.

Dr. Jousset is CEO of the biotechnology company Cybiome GmbH and professor at Nanjing Agricultural University. He ranks among the top 2% microbial ecology researchers (Stanford global ranking). He holds a PhD from he Technical University in Darmstadt and was professor at Utrecht University.

His work combines theoretical ecology with microbial genetics and bioinformatics to unlock the power of environmental microbiomes. His goal is to unravel universal predictors microbiome functioning by drawing on general theories rather than idiosyncratic traits. His company designs microbiome digital twins to answer biotechnology grand challenges around sustainable agriculture. He leverages this technology to improve microbiome ability to prevent diseases, improve plant nutrition or degrade recalcitrant pollutants.

Dr. van den Broek works in the Industrial Microbiology group at Delft University of Technology. His work primarily involves (meta)genomics projects, including variant calling, de novo assembly, and transcriptomics, utilizing next-generation sequencing technologies such as Illumina, Oxford Nanopore, and PacBio.

Additionally, he contributes to teaching the "Molecular Biotechnology and Genomics" master's course and the "Multi-Omics Approaches for Improvement of Industrial Microbes" advanced course.

Dr. Patz is a leading expert in metagenomics data analysis at Computomics, where he focuses on applying advanced bioinformatics and machine learning to microbial community profiling across agriculture, medicine, and environmental sectors. He is actively involved in the development of MORPHEUS, Computomics' remote metagenomics sensing and analysis platform, which enables high-throughput, machine learning-powered insights into microbial functions and their practical applications.

Dr. Patz is currently working on integrating microbiome-derived plant growth-promoting pathway (PGPT) maps into predictive breeding technologies. His work supports the development of precision agriculture tools, such as xSeedScore, which leverages the GEMMf-Model (Genotype x Environment x Management x Microbiome + Functions) to optimize plant breeding outcomes.