Sebastian Schmidt
Biography
Sebastian graduated in 2010 with degrees in Biotechnology from the École Supérieure de Biotechnologie (ESBS) and in Environmental Engineering from the École et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre (EOST) at the University of Strasbourg, France. In 2014, he completed a PhD in Computational Biology under the supervison of Christian von Mering at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, where he subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2016, Sebastian moved to the team of Peer Bork at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, where he worked as a postdoctoral researcher and (from 2018 on) as a research scientist. In 2024, Sebastian joined the APC Microbiome and School of Medicine at the University College Cork as a Lecturer in Microbiome & Health.
Research Interests
Sebastian’s research is focused on microbial ecology and evolution at global scales. He develops computational tools and resources to understand the drivers of dynamics and adaptation in microbial systems, from the human gut to environmental habitats. A particular focus of his work is the interplay between diet and the microbiome: our diet shapes the microbial communities within us, but our microbes also influence how we digest (or react to) the food we eat. We still only superficially understand how dietary components impact our microbes and are metabolized by them. Unravelling such diet-microbe interactions at scale is an essential step towards designing targeted dietary interventions, at the heart of Sebastian’s work at the APC.
Publications
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=E3pOqaEAAAAJ&hl=en
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8587-4177
Researcher ID: F-3022-2014