Welcome to CMR, Prof. Phil B. Pope!
As a microbial ecologist and physiologist, Professor Phil B. Pope leads the Microbial Ecology and Meta-Omics (MEMO) group and has greater than 15 years’ experience using multi-omic tools to deconvolute the intimate genomic and physiological relationships between microbial populations within complex microbiomes that are integral to gut function, health and nutrition of animals. Phil has a BSc from Griffith University (Queensland, Australia) majoring in physical mathematics, with first-class honours in environmental microbiology (2003); a PhD in metagenomics from Griffith University (2007); and postdoc experience at CSIRO with Professor Mark Morrison (2007-2010). Phil moved to Europe in 2010 as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Incoming fellow with renowned enzymologist Prof. Vincent Eijsink and started his group with an ERC starting grant in 2014. Phil is the PI of a Novo Nordisk Fonden fellowship “SuPAcow” and coordinator for the ERA-Net project “ImprovAFish”, which both seek to modulate the feed-microbiome-host axis in cows and fish, respectively. Phil also makes central scientific and management contributions to large national and European collaborative efforts that includes work package leadership roles in two ~10 mEUR Horizon 2020 projects (HoloRuminant and 3D’omics) that are focused on animal-microbiome interactions.
Phil’s current research seeks to expand microbiome “omic” approaches to envelop additional “molecular layers” from the animal holobiont (i.e. host genome, transcriptome and proteome), a concept otherwise known as “holo-omics”. CMR are happy to welcome Phil into our ranks, and we look forward to some exciting collaborations in research in the coming years!