Prof. Paul Cotter is Head of the Food Biosciences Department of the Agriculture and Food Development Authority (Teagasc), Ireland. Teagasc is a research-performing organisation with statutory responsibility to provide integrated research, advisory and education/training services for the agriculture and food industry in Ireland. Teagasc is a client-based organisation employing approximately 1,100 staff at 55 locations throughout Ireland. Research in Teagasc is conducted at seven dedicated research centres. The Food Bioscience Department is part of the Teagasc Moorepark Research Centre. It specialises in many aspects of food science and technology including food processing and ingredient functionality, functional foods, food cultures, cheese and fermented dairy products and food safety. Teagasc Moorepark has a particular focus on food and health and the role of the gut microbiota and is a co-host to APC Microbiome Ireland.

Paul Cotter is Senior Principal Research Officer with the APC Microbiome Ireland (University College Cork) and VistaMilk SFI Research Centres, as well as Food for Health Ireland. He has extensive expertise in microbiome analysis of foods, the analysis of the human gut microbiome of the gastrointestinal tract with the view to maintaining/establishing a healthy gut flora through dietary interventions, as well as the investigation of antimicrobial peptides / bacteriocins. He is coordinator of the EU H2020 Innovation Action MASTER, leader of the Irish Next Generation Sequencing Centre, and co-founder and CTO of SeqBiome Ltd. Paul Cotter has supervised 31 PhD students, ten MSc students and 30 post-doctoral fellows. He is author / co-author of more than 350 peer-reviewed publications, of which several publications in top journals (Nature, Nature Food, Nature Rev. Microbiology, …), Field Editor in Chief of Frontiers Microbiology, and made the Clarivate list of highly cited researchers since 2018.

Personal web-page: Paul Cotter | University College Cork (ucc.ie)

Publications: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5465-9068

Next-Generation Food Microbiome Research: Use of metagenomic approaches for characterizing microbial communities in foods (especially fermented foods) and along the food chain

Microorganisms exist along the food chain and impact the quality and safety of foods in both positive and negative ways. Identifying and understanding the behaviour of these microbial communities enable the implementation of preventative or corrective measures in public health and food industry settings. Traditional culture-dependent microbial analyses are time-consuming and target only specific subsets of microbes. However, the greater use of culture-independent metagenomic approaches has the potential to facilitate a thorough characterization of the microbial communities along the food chain. Indeed, these methods have shown potential in contributing to outbreak investigation, ensuring food authenticity, assessing the spread of antimicrobial resistance, tracking microbial dynamics during fermentation and processing, and uncovering the factors along the food chain that impact food quality and safety. During the seminar, I will provide an overview of our research in these areas, while providing specific examples relating to specific foods and relevant food chain-related environments.