A scientific event organized to better understand the microbiome (bacteria living in symbiosis with the human body), infectious diseases and clinical metagenomics –where it all started and what the future holds in a public health standpoint.

Our speakers: Dorottya Nagy-Szakal, MD PhD and Daniela Bezdan, PhD

Dorottya Nagy-Szakal, MD PhD

Dorottya earned a Doctor of Medicine and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in clinical medicine from Semmelweis University School of Medicine in Hungary. She has 9+ years of experience holding postdoctoral fellowships at Baylor College of Medicine/ Texas Children's Hospital and Columbia University in translational medicine, pediatrics, gastroenterology and microbiology. She has over 25 publications in peer-reviewed journals and two book chapters. She is also the President of the New York Hungarian Scientific Society and Hungarian Idea Exchange. Dorottya recently joined Biotia, a New York City based startup focusing on surveillance, rapid diagnosis and prevention of hospital acquired infections powered by AI. She will present her work focusing on clinical metagenomics. 

Daniela Bezdan, PhD

Dr. Daniela Bezdan is currently working as the Research Director of the Mason Laboratory of Integrative Genomics at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. She is involved in multiple diverse projects in urban metagenomics and NASA microbiome/omics studies (ISS space station & Mars rover). She is particular interested in development of noval next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies and bioinformatic solutions. Daniela is also the current Executive Director of the International MetaSub consortium with members from more than 20 countries. Her academic pedigree includes the EMBL in Heidelberg (Germany), the Max-Planck-Institute in Tübingen (Germany), UCSD (USA), the University of Kyoto (Japan), the CRG/EMBL in Barcelona (Spain) and the Weill-Cornell-Med in New York (USA).