Prof. James B. Adams is a President’s Professor in Arizona State University Biodesign Center for Health Through Microbiomes and the School of Engineering of Matter, Transport, and Energy (SEMTE). He leads the Autism/Asperger’s Research Program at ASU, with a focus on biomedical issues, including nutrition, nutritional supplements, gut health, and microbiota transplant. He is also President of Gut–Brain Axis Therapeutics Inc. and President of Autism Diagnostics LLC.
Dr. Rosa Krajmalnik Brown is the director of the Biodesign Center for Health Through Microbiomes and a Professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and The Built Environment at Arizona State University. She came to the US with a Fulbright Scholarship to obtain a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2005. She was awarded an NSF CAREER award, was selected by Fulton Engineering Exemplar Faculty, in 2020 she was awarded Arizona Researcher of the year by AZBio, and has been recognized as a highly cited researcher in her field by Web of Science in 2020 and 2021. She has secured funding for her research from many federal agencies, including NIH, DoE, DoD, and NSF. She is a pioneer in research on gut microbiome and autism. She is the author of nine patents and more than 130 peer-reviewed publications. She specializes in molecular microbial ecology for bioremediation, the use of microbial systems for bioenergy production, and human intestinal microbial ecology and its relationship with obesity, bariatric surgery, metabolism, and autism.
Dr. Alexander Khoruts is a Professor of Medicine at the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, University of Minnesota. He also serves as Section Lead of Luminal GI and Director of the UMN Microbiota Therapeutics Program. Dr. Khoruts has trained at the University of Minnesota. In addition to completing his fellowship in gastroenterology, he also trained in basic immunology as a Howard Hughes Physician Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Marc Jenkins in the Department of Microbiology. He continued his early research focus on the basic biology of T cells and autoimmunity but has subsequently redirected his efforts into areas of microbiota therapeutics. As a physician–scientist, he is interested in translating basic scientific discoveries and ideas into clinical applications. His main focus since the mid-2000s has been on the development of treatments to repair antibiotic injury to intestinal microbial communities, also known as ‘microbiota.’ He was awarded the Research Excellence Award by the Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota, in 2018 and the Top Doctors by the Minnesota Monthly Magazine in 2017.
