I am a Neuroimmunologist studying how the gut-brain-immune system axis impacts brain pathologies. With an ever-increasing ageing population, neurodegenerative diseases are on the rise and this trend is projected to continue. In all the research carried out, one fundamental question lingers: What causes neurodegeneration? Delving deeper into understanding the environmental factor component of these complex neurological diseases is therefore pertinent.

The human body is a multisystem affected by ageing in numerous ways, some of them are at the interphase of our circulatory system and the environment, such as the gut. Environmental factors like nutrition, lifestyle, sleep and pollutants were shown to critically regulate how we age. My primary scientific goal is to deeply understand the basic cellular processes mediating gut-brain signaling, and to illuminate their connections to phenotypes such as frailty, neurodegeneration and increased susceptibility to various diseases. Specifically, I aim at identifying new peripheral immune interactions and mediators that may serve as novel approaches to treat neurological disorders and to better understand age-related basic biological processes.