Emma Allen-Vercoe

Emma obtained her BSc (Hons) in biochemistry in 1993 from the University of London, and her PhD in molecular microbiology through an industrial partnership with the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in 1999. Her PhD studies focused on virulence determinants of Salmonella enterica, and her postdoctoral years (in the UK, at the Centre for Applied Microbiological Research (now Public Health England)) as well as at the University of Calgary expanded this work and provided an opportunity to work on a range of different bacterial species, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Campylobacter jejuni and enterohemorrhagic E.coli. In 2005, Emma won a Fellow-to-Faculty transition award through the Canadian Association of Gastroenterologists/AstraZeneca and CIHR, that allowed her to start her independent career in Calgary in 2006. She chose to study the normal microbes of the human gut, at that time an emerging area of interest, and focused on trying to culture these so-called ‘unculturable’ microbes in order to better understand their biology. To do this, she developed a model gut system (dubbed ‘Robogut’) to emulate the conditions of the human gut and allow communities of microbes to grow together, as they do naturally.

Emma moved her lab and this system to the University of Guelph in late 2007, and has been a recent recipient of the John Evans Leader’s Fund (through the Canadian Foundation for Innovation) that has allowed her to develop her specialist anaerobic fermentation laboratory further. She currently manages a lab of 11 people with projects that are broad in nature, but united under the banner of human microbiome research, including studies of Clostridioides difficile infection, diabetes, colorectal cancer, and neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis. In 2013, Emma co-founded NuBiyota, a research spin-off company that aims to create therapeutic ecosystems as biologic drugs, on a commercial scale.