A background in Microbiology and Computational Biology (UAB, Spain and VUB, Belgium), Dr Mireia Valles-Colomer did her PhD at Jeroen Raes Lab (VIB-KU Leuven, Belgium). As part of her PhD research, she performed the first population-level study on the link between the gut microbiome and host anxiety and depression, characterising the microbial production and degradation of neuroactive compounds (Valles-Colomer et al, Nat. Microbiology 2019). The study received so-far more than 990 citations, was included in "Nature milestones 2019" as milestone paper in human microbiota research, and was awarded a recommendation from F1000Prime.

After her PhD she moved to CIBIO (Italy) as an EMBO postdoctoral fellow to continue her research on the transmission landscape of the microbiome. She showed that the microbiome is transmitted extensively among individuals in close contact (Valles-Colomer et al, Nat. Microbiology 2022; Valles-Colomer et al, Nature (under revision)). In 2023 she will start her research group at UPF (Barcelona, Spain).