I have been working in microbiome research for approx. 20 years.
I studied agricultural sciences in France until 2002, including a Master thesis project on the molecular analysis of human fecal microbiota in the lab of Joël Doré (INRAE, Jouy‐en‐Josas, France). 
I then obtained my PhD in Microbiology in 2006 at the Institute of Human Nutrition under the supervision of Michael Blaut (Potsdam, Germany). Thereafter, I stayed for 11 years at the Technical University of Munich (Germany), first as a postdoc and then junior group leader under the mentoring of Dirk Haller.
Since 2017, I have my own independent research group at the University Hospital of RWTH Aachen (Germany), with an excellent team of young researchers and students and great colleagues in our close surrounding (e.g. Oliver Pabst and Mathias Hornef).
My lab has specialized in the isolation and bioinformatic analysis of cultured gut bacteria, generating direct added value in bacterial taxonomy and the discovery of novel microbial functions. Our work also open new avenues for microbiome‐based applications based on synthetic communities. The use of isolates in vitro (chemostat systems) and in vivo (gnotobiotes) helps us studying interactions between them and effects on the host.