Plenary Speakers

Professor David Kay

David Kay is Professor of Environment and Health at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. In addition, he is Director of the Centre for Research into Environment and Health (CREH). This tem completed the epidemiological studies which underpin the WHO standards fir recreational waters and they have recently led Randomised Controlled Trials into bathing waters and health in the EU as well as investigation of viral parameters of bathing water quality. David Kay has acted as consultant and/or advisers on standards for recreational and drinking water to WHO, EU, USEPA, NERC, EPSRC, DEFRA, DWI, HPa, Scottish Government, Environment Agency, SEPA and WRc. Recently, David Kay has acted as:

specialist adviser to the House of Lords, European Communities Select Committee enquiry into the revision of the EU Bathing Water Directive;
consultant to EU-DGXI on revised standards for bathing waters throughout the community;
member Scientific Advisory Committee to NERC on the new Environment and Human Health Initiative;
adviser to the WHO on recreational water Guidelines design and water-related risk assessment;
consultant to WHO on the development of global disease burden assessment in the area of water and sanitation; and
adviser to USEPA on revision of the US Bathing water quality Guidelines.

Since 2001, the CREH team have completed research projects funded by international agencies (WHO and EU), research councils, Government and industry and received over £5m in external funding resulting in over 100 papers and reports available from:-

http://www.aber.ac.uk/iges/staff/kaydavid.shtml

Professor Paul Rainey

Paul Rainey New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study, Massey University, New Zealand

Paul Rainey is a Professor of evolutionary genetics at the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study (NZIAS) and Institute for Molecular Biosciences at Massey University Auckland. He is also visiting Professor at Stanford University, Senior Adjunct Researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science & Technology, Principle Investigator at the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology & Evolution, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ. Paul completed his PhD at the University of Canterbury which was followed by post-doctoral research at Cambridge University. In 1991 Paul worked for a government-funded research institute in Oxford. In 1994 he was awarded a BBSRC Advanced Research Fellowship, which he took to the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford. In 1996 he was appointed to a faculty position at Oxford, a fellowship at St. Cross College, and a stipendiary lectureship at Wadham.

In 2003, Paul returned to New Zealand as Chair of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Auckland. Paul's research group recently (August 2007) moved to NZIAS, at Massey University's Albany Campus, where their work focuses on evolutionary process, particularly, but not exclusively, evolution by natural selection. Their work is both theoretical and empirical and makes use of microbial populations in order to observe and dissect evolution in real time. A growing fascination is the evolutionary origins of multicellularity. Other interests include the ecological significance of diversity in natural microbial populations; microbial mats; evolutionary processes determining patterns of diversity in space and time; and the genetics and fitness consequences of traits that enhance ecological performance in populations of plant-colonizing bacteria; ecological stoichiometry; the causes of regulatory complexity; new approaches to killing bugs; phage; vibrios and their association with anemones (and phage). Paul's website link is http://evolution.massey.ac.nz/rainey, and a complete list of recent work can be found at http://evolution.massey.ac.nz/rainey/publications.shtml.

Dr Mansel W. Griffiths

Dr Mansel W. Griffiths Dr Griffiths was born and raised in Swansea, S. Wales. He obtained his BSc degree in Applied Biology from North East London Polytechnic and his PhD from Leicester University where he studied the biochemistry of thermophilic microorganisms under the supervision of Sir Hans Kornberg.

Dr Griffiths was appointed to the staff of the Hannah Research Institute, Ayr, Scotland in 1974 and, in 1980, he was appointed head of the Dairy Microbiology group. In 1990 Dr Griffiths was appointed Chair in Dairy Microbiology in the Food Science Department at the University of Guelph. Dr Griffiths' position is funded jointly by the Dairy Farmers of Ontario and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Dr Griffiths is Program Chair for the M.Sc. in Food Safety and Quality Assurance being offered at Guelph and is the Director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety.

His current research interests include rapid detection of foodborne pathogens; factors controlling growth and survival of microorganisms in foods; and beneficial uses of microorganisms. Dr Griffiths has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and appears on ISI HighlyCited.com.

Dr Griffiths is an Editor of Applied and Environmental Microbiology; an Associate Scientific Editor of the Journal of Food Science, a member of the Executive Editorial Board of Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, and serves on the editorial boards of Food Research International, Journal of Food Protection, International Journal of Food Microbiology and Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. He is a member of the International Dairy Federation working group on milk-borne pathogens and Chair of the FIL-IDF Canada Coordinating Committee on Food Safety. Dr Griffiths serves on the Expert Scientific Advisory Committee for Dairy Farmers of Canada and on the scientific advisory boards of three biotechnology companies. He is Chair of the International Advisory Board of the EU 6th Framework Project entitled "Biotracer". He was the recipient of the International Association of Food Protection Maurice Weber Laboratorian of the Year for 2002 and served on the Ontario Meat Inspection Review, Expert Scientific Advisory Committee in 2004. In 2006 he was appointed Visiting Professor at Jinan University, China.

Dr William Miller

William Miller is a Research Microbiologist at the USDA, ARS lab in Albany, California. Dr. Miller received his PhD at UCLA; his thesis topic was 'The role of chromosomal context in the regulation of gene expression in Escherichia coli'. He then worked on Pseudomonas syringae as a post-doc in the laboratories of Drs. Nick Panopoulos and Steve Lindow at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Miller has spent the last ten years with the USDA at the Western Regional Research Center. His research program has concentrated on two main projects.

The first is the development of novel sequence-based typing methods; Dr. Miller has expanded multilocus-sequence typing into several new Campylobacter and Arcobacter species, e.g., C. lari, C. concisus and A. butzleri.
The second project is the sequencing of multiple Campylobacter and Arcobacter genomes. Dr. Miller's lab has been involved in the sequencing and/or annotation of the genomes of eleven Campylobacter and two Arcobacter species.

Dr Robin Temmerman

Dr Robin Temmerman Dr Temmerman graduated magna cum laude in 1999 at Ghent University as Master in Biotechnology. His thesis dealt with antibiotic resistance profiles of bacterial communities in water from fish farms and hospitals. From 1999 - 2003 Dr Temmerman performed research at the Laboratory of Microbiology (UGent; Prof. Swings) on the development of molecular tools to investigate the quality and functionality of probiotics. In October 2003, he obtained his PhD degree in Microbiology from Ghent University and from 2004 till 2006 was employed as project manager at the Laboratory of Microbial Ecology and Technology (UGent, Prof. Verstraete) mainly dealing with research towards the use of probiotic bacteria for environmental applications such as biological control of Legionella in water systems. Since January 2007 Dr. Temmerman is working as R&D manager at the Belgian multinational Chrisal, specialised in probiotic cleaning for several industries. During his years of research, Dr. Temmerman published over 20 A1 papers and contributed to several books.

NZMS Microbiology Conference for 2008Germs and Genomes in the Garden City

Plenary Speakers

Professor David Kay

Professor Paul Rainey

Dr Mansel W. Griffiths

Dr William Miller

Dr Robin Temmerman

How to get there

Full programme now available!

Conference themes include:

Important Dates

NZMS Microbiology Conference for 2008
Germs and Genomes in the Garden City