Lisa Maier - 2026 John Kendrew Award Recipient

Lisa Maier, who was a postdoc in the Genome Biology Unit at EMBL Heidelberg from 2015 to 2018 in the Typas Group, has received the 2026 John Kendrew Award in recognition of her transformative work on how commonly used drugs affect the human gut microbiota. During her time at EMBL, Maier pioneered the transition of microbiome research from primarily computational analyses to systematic experimental approaches. Her 2018 Nature paper provided the first comprehensive map of how marketed drugs directly affect prevalent members of the human gut microbiome. Cited more than 2,000 times, the study has substantially influenced the field and challenged existing drug development pipelines and regulatory policies. After leaving EMBL, Maier established her own laboratory at the University of Tübingen, supported by an Emmy Noether Fellowship. Her subsequent work developed proof-of-concept strategies to counteract antibiotic-induced microbiome damage and demonstrated how specific non-antibiotic drugs can disrupt colonisation resistance, increasing infection risk. She was appointed as a full professor in 2022 and has since secured major competitive funding. Summary 00:00 - Introduction by Chair of the EMBL Alumni Association, Pavel Tomancak 01:34 - Presentation by Nassos Typas 07:09 - Lecture by Lisa Maier Credits Audiovisual: EMBL Photolab Design: EMBL Creative Team