The course has been booked out. Thanks so much for you interest!

The following couse will be offered within the Theodor Escherich Symposium 2026 in Graz, Austria.

The course is limited to 30 participants and will be free of charge.

What is this about?

Just like us, microbes rarely live alone, instead living in large microbial communities consisting of up to thousands of different strains that interact with each other and their environment. The functional repertoire of species is encoded by their specific genome; however, how they will interact with other strains and their environment cannot be deduced from genomic sequences alone.

Application for this position has concluded. Thank you!

Virtually every surface of our planet is colonized by microbes and the human body is no exception. The 38 trillion microbes living in our gut metabolize a large fraction of the dietary metabolites, pharmaceutical drugs, and xenobiotics we consume and thus provide an important interface between the environment and our blood stream.

Whereas many of the species forming the human gut microbiome have been well-characterized by now, we still know very little about the factors that determine which microbial species can coexist in any given individual. This currently limits our understanding regarding engraftment of pathogens and probiotics and how those will interact with other microbes and host tissues in the human gut.