ISAPP President Prof. Maria Marco Honored with LABIP Award at 15th Annual International Symposium on Lactic Acid Bacteria
A representative from Europe’s Lactic Acid Bacteria Industrial Platform (LABIP) awarded Prof. Maria Marco PhD with the prestigious LABIP Award for Mid-Career Senior Researcher at the 15th Annual International Symposium on Lactic Acid Bacteria, held in August.
Prof. Marco, who serves as ISAPP’s current President, is a professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of California, Davis. The LABIP award was given to recognize her extensive contributions to understanding the genetics and health benefits of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) over the past two decades of her career.
LABIP is a European Association that champions scientific work on LAB across academia and industry. Its Mid-Career Senior Researcher Award, given every three years during the LAB conference, honors scientists who demonstrate “outstanding excellence in LAB research with industrial relevance”. The selection committee evaluates candidates based on both their research focus, including novelty, rigor, and relevance to industry, as well as project and interpersonal skills.
“Prof. Marco is especially deserving of this award because she already contributed a lot to understanding microbiome ecosystems and their impact on health, with humility and kindness. It was an honor to reward her,” said Dr. Sophie Legrain, President of LABIP.
Prof. Marco’s foundational work on LAB began during her postdoctoral research at Wageningen University and NIZO Food Research in the Netherlands, where she led studies showing that probiotic lactobacilli are metabolically active in the intestine and responsive to diet.
After Prof. Marco established her own lab at UC Davis in 2008, she has built an internationally recognized research program on fermented foods, exploring how LAB and other microorganisms respond to their local environment in foods and the mammalian digestive tract.
Her lab also actively investigates the genetic diversity, functional attributes and community interactions of LAB to improve plant and dairy food fermentation. Activities in the lab’s EATLAC project are centered on developing recipes for cabbage, berry and pepper fermentations that have applications for both home fermenting and food manufacturing. Through her work with ISAPP, she has led the scientific consensus definitions of both fermented foods and gut health and has contributed extensively to ISAPP activities, projects and publications. Prof. Marco is also a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and serves on numerous international scientific advisory boards.
DISCLOSURE: Generative AI was used to compile information for the first draft of this post, with five human authors subsequently editing and fact-checking the content.
