Senior Research Associate of the FRS-FNRS (Belgian Funds for Scientific Research)
Promotor of the BCCM/ULC collection of cyanobacteria: http://bccm.belspo.be/about-us/bccm-ulc
My expertise focus on the molecular diversity and ecology of Cyanobacteria:
1) Microbial diversity and biogeography studies based on the use of molecular markers (16S rRNA, ITS, functional genes, cyanotoxin synthesis genes) and methods (cloning, HTS amplicon sequencing, metagenomics).
2) Taxonomy, evolution, molecular ecology, genomic adaptations and biogeography of cyanobacteria, with a particular focus on Polar biotopes (Antarctica and the Arctic).
3) Study of cyanobacterial blooms and their potential toxicity by molecular methods

Biogeography
Biology of Organisms
Botanics
Ecophysiology
Genomics
Microbiology
Phylogeography
Systematics
Taxonomy

I would like to join a project aiming at the restoration of ecosystems where cyanobacteria play a role and could be used as indicator of the efficiency of the restoration process, e.g. lakes that are prone to cyanobacterial blooms, potentially producing cyanotoxins, or Antarctic/Arctic ecosystems. Cyanobacteria are important primary producers, especially in somewhat extreme conditions where the competition with/predation by eucaryotes is less active. Some genera fix atmospheric nitrogen. In addition, I am director of a public culture collection that is a repository of cyanobacterial strains for research and innovation, and a project including isolation of new strains would be interesting as a means of 'ex situ' conservation for future use.
We are involved in targeted metagenomics (or 'amplicon sequencing') of the 16S rRNA of cyanobacteria, complemented with the development of the GEN-ERA toolbox, a suite of Nextflow-Singularity workflows designed for comparative genomics of prokaryotes and small eukaryotes.
- Pessi, I. S., Popin, R. V., Durieu, B., Lara, Y., Tytgat, B., Savaglia, V., Roncero-Ramos, B., Hultman, J., Verleyen, E., Vyverman, W., & Wilmotte, A. (July 2023). Novel diversity of polar Cyanobacteria revealed by genome-resolved metagenomics. Microbial Genomics, 9 (7), 001056. doi:10.1099/mgen.0.001056
- Pertierra, L. R., Convey, P., Barbosa, A., Biersma, E. M., Cowan, D., Diniz-Filho, J. A. F., de Los Ríos, A., Escribano-Álvarez, P., Fraser, C. I., Fontaneto, D., Grev

cyanobacteria, 16s rrna sequences, its sequences, molecular diversity, molecular ecology, aquatic, polar, terrestrial

ECCO in Utrecht (15-17 september 2025)