Dr. Muriel Derrien

is microbiologist by training (France). 
She has a long-standing experience in gut microbiota research starting in 2002 at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, in one of the pioneer laboratory in the field,  under the supervision of Pr. Willem de Vos. Her PhD, contributed to the launch of the first next-generation beneficial microbe (Akkermansia) on the market. 
 

During her post-doctoral research (2007-2010), under the supervision of Pr Michiel Kleerebezem), she worked on inter-disciplinary projects within the Dutch consortium Top Institute in Food and Nutrition, where she contributed to elucidating gut microbiota-host interactions following dietary interventions. 
 

In 2010, she joined Danone Nutricia Research in France, with the objective to translate science into innovation for human health, with the challenge to study generally healthy populations. 
She contributed in generating of scientific evidence related to the gut microbiome of new fermented milk products with probiotics to be launched to the market, built new axes of research including adult-commensal bacteria as new probiotics and contributed to implementing more precise approaches taking into account of the gut microbiome. 
 

In 2023, she joined the lab of Pr. Jeroen Raes in VIB-KU Leuven, Belgium, where she focusses on human studies in health and disease and to couple them with mechanistic insights in order to identify microbiome-precise approaches to modulate human health.