 Plenary speakers
 Conference opening (public) lecture - Wine Science
Prof. Sakkie Pretorius
Australian Wine Research Institute
Sakkie Pretorius graduated from the University of the Orange Free State (South Africa) and obtained his PhD in Molecular Yeast Genetics under the supervision of Prof Julius Marmur from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York in 1986. He was the founding Director of the Institute for Wine Biotechnology at Stellenbosch University and fulfilled this role until the end of 2002 before he moved to Australia to take up the position of Managing Director of The Australian Wine Research Institute in Adelaide. He is also an Affiliate Professor at the University of Adelaide. The main focus of his research has been on Wine Microbiology and Biotechnology. He has supervised 31 PhD students and 56 MSc students. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed research papers and book chapters, delivered more than 500 lectures at conferences and research seminars, and filed 6 patents. His viewpoint is that wine research should be directed toward increasing fundamental understanding in a context responsive to the applied needs of producers and consumers at levels of both problem selection and experimental design. Therefore, he believes that wine research inspired by both the quest for understanding the fundamentals and by considerations of future use, promises to be the most powerful dynamo of technological progress that would support the cost-effective production of wine with minimised resource inputs, improved product quality, increased health benefits and low environmental impact.
 Plenary speaker - Medical Microbiology
Prof. John Collier
Harvard Medical School
R. John Collier, Ph.D., Presley Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School, has been a pioneer in elucidating the structures and modes of action of bacterial protein toxins. Early in his career he discovered that diphtheria toxin inactivated mammalian elongation factor-2 by an NAD-dependent mechanism, later identified as ADP-ribosylation. This represented the first demonstration that a protein toxin can penetrate to the cytosol of mammalian cells and directly modify a target substrate. While on the faculty at UCLA (1966-1984) he defined fundamental structure-function relationships of diphtheria toxin. After joining Harvard, he turned his attention to the question of how protein toxins cross membranes. His studies on diphtheria toxin and anthrax toxin in recent years have revealed much about the molecular mechanisms by which the enzymic moieties of these toxins are delivered into cells. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1991 and has received many other honors for his studies.
 Plenary speaker - Microbial Ecology
Prof. Michael Wagner
University of Vienna
Michael Wagner is head of the Department of Microbial Ecology at the University of Vienna. He leads a large and dynamic department and has published >150 papers in high impact journals including Nature, Science, PNAS, and PLoS Biology. He is also among the 10 most highly cited microbiology researchers in the world. Michael’s major research focus is the characterisation of uncultured bacteria. This research topic is highly important because uncultured bacteria are essential for the health of our planet and of major importance for biotechnology and medicine. To this end, Michael and colleagues have been instrumental in the development of innovative single-cell methods for the functional analyses of uncultured microorganisms within their natural ecosystems, such as fluorescence in situ hybridisation – microautoradiography (FISH-MAR) and Raman-FISH. His work spans a variety of model systems including wastewater treatment plants, symbiotic “environmental” chlamydiae and nitrifying as well as sulfate-reducing bacteria and archaea. Michael is an editor of Environmental Microbiology and FEMS Microbiology Ecology and a board member of the International Society for Microbial Ecology. Michael has received numerous awards and is a founding member of the European Academy of Microbiology.
 Plenary speaker - Molecular Evolution
Prof. Ken Wolfe
Trinity College, Dublin
Professor Wolfe is interested in genome evolution in eukaryotes, and has chosen the yeasts (unicellular ascomycete fungi) as a primary system to work on. In 1997 Prof. Wolfe and colleagues discovered that the bakers' yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an ancient polyploid, having undergone a whole-genome duplication (WGD) approximately 100 Mya. This was the first time an ancient polyploidization had been detected by bioinformatic analysis of a genome sequence. Subsequently Prof. Wolfe has focused on the evolutionary implications of the WGD, including the way in which the deletion of genes from polyploid genomes can cause passive reproductive isolation between lineages. Prof. Wolfe's group sequenced the genome of Kluyveromyces polysporus, a species that diverged from the S. cerevisiae lineage very soon after the WGD when the process of gene loss had just begun.
In 2005 Prof. Wolfe and colleagues developed the Yeast Gene Order Browser (YGOB) as a way of visualizing and curating the synteny relationships among sequenced yeast genomes. YGOB enables the identification of orthologs, evolutionary rearrangements of gene order, and inferences about the ancestral content and structure of the genome at the time of WGD.
Prof. Wolfe's current research projects are focused on gene gain and loss, orphan genes, gene order evolution, the evolution of the yeast MAT locus system, paleopolyploidization in eukaryotes, and Chloroplast genome evolution.
 Plenary speaker - Industrial Microbiology
Dr. Anna Eliasson Lantz
Technical University of Denmark
Dr Lantz is an associate professor at the Department of Systems Biology, Technical University of Denmark with over 80 peer-reviewed publications in the field of industrial microbiology and microbial systems biology. Dr Lantz is a Biochemical Engineer with expertise on microbial fermentation for industrial processes. Her main work is focused on using metabolic engineering and systems biology to improve secondary metabolite production in industrially relevant microorganisms. She currently leads several major EU-funded projects as described below: (1) Actinobacteria as cell factories – a) Streptomics (systems biology strategies and metabolome engineering for the enhanced production of recombinant proteins in Streptomyces); b) Combig-Top (Combinatorial Biosynthesis of Industrial Glycopeptides: Technology, Optimization and Production); c) ActinoGEN (Actinomycetes Genomics); (2) Heterologous production of polyketides using yeasts and filamentous fungi as cell factories.
 Plenary speaker - Systems Biology
Prof. Steve Oliver
University of Cambridge
Steve Oliver is Professor of Systems Biology & Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Centre for Systems Biology. His research involves both experimental and bioinformatics approaches to understanding the workings of the eukaryotic cell, mainly using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as his experimental system. Steve Oliver led the European team that sequenced the first chromosome, from any organism, yeast chromosome III. He continued to play a major role in the Yeast Genome Sequencing Project, and went on to become Scientific Coordinator of EUROFAN, which pioneered a wide range of approaches to the systematic analysis of gene function, using S. cerevisiae. His current work employs a range of high-throughput analytical techniques – transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and rapid phenotyping. He is exploiting genome-wide metabolic models to identify functional modules within the yeast metabolic network and predict epistatic interactions between genes (http://www.bioc.cam.ac.uk/uto/oliver.html). He collaborated with Ross King to develop the Robot Scientist system for automated functional genomic hypothesis generation and experimentation, and re-engineered the genome configuration of yeast to provide a direct test of the chromosomal theory of evolution. Steve Oliver is Editor-in-Chief of Yeast, a member of EMBO, a Fellow of both the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was recently made an Honorary Member of the British Mycological Society, Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and Professorial Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
 Plenary speaker - Food Microbiology
Dr. Katherine Swanson
Ecolab
Dr. Katherine M.J. Swanson is Vice President of Food Safety at Ecolab, the world’s leading provider of cleaning, food safety and health protection products and services. At Ecolab, Dr. Swanson identifies emerging food safety trends and new control strategies. Prior to joining Ecolab in 2004, she had extensive food safety experience at General Mills and Pillsbury in developing microbiological and food allergen controls, Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) and product quality management systems, specification systems and food quality audits. She also developed applications for innovative food microbiological test methods at 3M Company and was an Assistant Professor of Food Microbiology at Cornell University.
Dr. Swanson is currently Secretary for the International Association for Food Protection and will be President in 2012-13. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Food Technologists and a member of the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods. Dr. Swanson has also served on the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods, the Food and Drug Administration’s Science Board, the Conference for Food Protection’s Council III, and the National Academy of Science Standing Committee on the Use of Public Health Data in FSIS Food Safety Programs.
Dr. Swanson received her Bachelor of Science in Dietetics from the University of Delaware, and her Master of Science and Ph.D. in Food Science from the University of Minnesota. She has received numerous awards, including the 2003 NFPA Food Safety Award and the 2008 National Center for Food Safety and Technology Food Safety Award.
 NZMS Orator
Prof. Iain Lamont
University of Otago
Iain Lamont is a Professor in Biochemistry at the University of Otago. He completed his BSc (Hons) in microbiology at the University of Edinburgh (1980) and a D Phil on the genetics of sporulation in bacteria at the University of Oxford in 1983. In 1984 he took up a position as a National Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide, working on the molecular biology of bacteriophage. Iain moved to the University of Otago in 1987 and established a research programme investigating molecular biological aspects of the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. A major focus of this programme has been the mechanisms that P. aeruginosa uses to acquire iron, an essential process in infection, and the molecular mechanisms that regulate iron acquisition. A recent development in his research programme has involved direct examination of how these bacteria acquire iron during infection in patients, rather than in the research laboratory. Iain is a past president of the New Zealand Microbiological Society and is currently the New Zealand Country Liaison for the American Society for Microbiology, as well as being the New Zealand contact for the International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS).
Invited Speakers
 Invited speaker - Medical Microbiology
Prof. Julian Rood
Monash University
Julian Rood holds a Personal Chair in the Department of Microbiology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He leads a large research group that focuses on the genetics and pathogenesis of anaerobic bacteria, publishing over 175 papers in this field. He has published in leading journals such as Nature, the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, PNAS, Genome Research and PLoS Pathogens. He has played a leading role in the development of the genetics of the pathogenic clostridia and the determination of the role of toxins in clostridial infections. He has also worked extensively on the genetics and pathogenesis of the bacterium that causes ovine footrot. He is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Microbiology and the Australian Society for Microbiology and from 2004-2006 was President of the Australian Society for Microbiology. He is currently the American Society for Microbiology’s Ambassador for Australia, New Zealand and Oceania.
 Invited speaker – Structural Biology
Prof. Ted Baker
University of Auckland
Professor Ted Baker is a graduate of the University of Auckland. He began his career in protein crystallography as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford University, working with Professor Dorothy Hodgkin on the structure of insulin. He then returned to lead the establishment of structural biology in New Zealand, and has made international contributions in many areas, including protein structure refinement, hydrogen bonding, and the function of metalloproteins and bacterial toxins. Among his international roles, he served as President of the International Union of Crystallography (1996-1999), and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of several international bodies, including the Worldwide Protein Data Bank. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Auckland. Professor Baker is a Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ, winner of the Rutherford Medal, the Liley Medal and the Hector Medal, and was an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was also founding Director of the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery, one of NZ’s eight Centres of Research Excellence. His current research interests focus on experimental protein structure analysis and its applications to functional genomics, structure-based drug design, and the microbial pathogenesis.
 Invited speaker – Medical Microbiology
Prof. John Fraser
University of Auckland
John Fraser is Professor and Head of School of Medical Sciences at the University of Auckland and also the Deputy Director of the Maurice Wilkins Centre of Excellence. John gained a PhD in Biochemistry from Auckland and did postdoctoral research on T cell Receptor and MHC at Harvard University with Jack Strominger. In 1992 he received the inaugural Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship to New Zealand and was appointed to the Auckland University Faculty as a Professor in 1998. John has enjoyed a long standing interest in the mechanisms of host/pathogen immunity to gram positive bacteria. His early work on bacterial superantigens has lead to his current focus on a conserved cluster of staphylococcal superantigen-like virulence factors (SSLs) believed to be important for staphylococcal survival.
 American Society for Microbiology International Speaker
Prof. Marilyn Roossinck
Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation
Roossinck and her researchers are interested in understanding how and why viruses evolve to cause disease. The majority of viruses probably do not cause disease, but research in virology has been extremely biased. The only viruses that have been studied are those that cause disease in humans and their domestic plants and animals. Measures to control virus diseases, especially in plants, have been largely unsuccessful. It is unlikely that any effective measures will be designed until it is understood why normally benign, or even beneficial, viruses evolve to cause disease. Roossinck's lab is using several approaches to tackle this question: they are studying the dynamics of virus populations and the mechanisms of evolution using RNA plant viruses in the family Bromoviridae; they are assessing the biodiversity and ecology of wild plant viruses that generally do not cause disease, and they are studying the mechanisms of a lethal virus-induced disease in tomato.
 Invited speaker - Biofilms
Assoc. Prof. Chris Sissons
University of Otago
In recognition of his services to NZMS and microbiology in NZ, Chris was awarded a special NZMS Travel Grant to attend the conference.
I am a HRC Senior Research Fellow, Dental Research Group in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, Wellington School of Medicine (University of Otago).
I started my scientific career with a biochemistry MSc (VUW), a PhD on developing a (Brewer’s) yeast cell-free protein synthesizing system in the Microbiology then Cell Biology Dept. Auckland University, and then did post-doctoral study in the Yeast Cell-cycle group at the University of Edinburgh of cell-cycle physiology in fission yeast (Schizosacharomycs pombe). Returning to NZ on an Facial Excema Fellowship at Ruakura (more biochemistry), I then moved to the Thermophile Group at the University of Waikato, isolating and studying cellulolytic extreme thermophiles with the object of developing biomass conversion to fuel processes. When the the funding ran out in 1983 I joined the then MRC Dental Research Unit in Wellington, transforming into an oral microbiologist.
Dental plaque is now known to be a highly complex oral biofilm of bacterial communities with hundreds of species in varied structures, its study requiring new ecological concepts and techniques. I have developed over the last decade, a unique laboratory biofilm model ecosystem system, a sophisticated ‘Artificial Mouth’, allowing a wide range of environmentally-controlled experiments into plaque ecology and pathology. I have used this to develop the study of plaque microcosms and investigate the mode and regulation of plaque biofilm growth, plaque pH, urea metabolism and plaque mineralization. I and my colleagues are currently developing new approaches to plaque microbial composition, structure and pathogenicity with the potential to provide new ways of controlling caries, calculus and periodontal disease. A major objective involves developing a better understanding of the sub-biofilm microbial communities of dental plaque, focusing on the formation of pathogen communities, their interactions, oral environmental factors affecting them, how they cause disease, and the development of prevention strategies. Major projects also include modeling treatments with antimicrobial agents to understand the reasons for plaque resilience to them, and a study of risk prediction and treatment programmes for dental caries in Christchurch school and pre-school children.
 Invited speaker – Water microbiology
Graham McBride
NIWA
Graham McBride is a Principal Scientist at the Hamilton office of NIWA (the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research) where he works on many aspects of water management issues, including pathogen contamination and associated effects on human health. His main skill set lies in the application of mathematical and statistical procedures and approaches to elucidate the role of various environmental processes and, increasingly, to perform quantitative risk assessments. These topics, on which he has published a book and numerous papers, fulfill his long-held wish—that mathematics can be more than helpful to understanding and managing these issues, and that to do so demands that the mathematician works closely with a number of other disciplines. Not least, microbiology! Current major projects include: (i) a national three-year multi-agency project: Campylobacteriosis and the Environment: Establishing the Link with Public Health, which will make its final report in June 2010, and (ii) advising USA water management agencies on how best to include QMRA (Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment) procedures into the development of new water quality criteria aimed at protection of swimmers' health.
 Invited speaker – Microbial ecology
Dr. Peter Janssen
AgResearch
Peter completed his PhD at the University of Waikato, studying unusual anaerobic bacteria. After a post-doctoral position at the Thermophile Research Unit, he was awarded an Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellowship to work in Konstanz, Germany, where he investigated unusual degradation pathways in anaerobic bacteria. This was followed by three years as a research group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. This is where Peter became interested in microbial ecology, while investigating the microbial community involved in methane formation in rice paddies. It was also in Marburg that he glimpsed the possibility of culturing ecologically-significant bacteria that had so-far eluded study. In 1996 Peter moved to the University of Melbourne in Australia, where he became an Associate Professor and Reader, and taught microbial ecology and biotechnology. In Melbourne he established a research team that developed simple and readily applicable methods that showed that many of so-called unculturable soil bacteria are indeed able to be cultured in the laboratory. In 2007 Peter joined AgResearch. He now leads a team within the ruminant methane mitigation program, combining his knowledge of anaerobic microorganisms, pathways of methane formation, microbial ecology, and cultivation methods, to better understand the biology of the rumen.
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