Dr. Alain Stintzi

Biography

Dr. Alain Stintzi obtained his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the Louis-Pasteur University in France (1997). He was subsequently a Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry, University of California at Berkeley, where he worked on siderophore mediated iron transport.

In 2000, Dr. Stintzi was appointed Assistant Professor at the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, Oklahoma State University. He became Associate Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, University of Ottawa, and a member of the Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology in July 2005. He was promoted to Professor in 2012 and Vice-Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in September 2013.

Dr. Stintzi has considerable experience in systems biology approaches to study the role of the gut microbiota in infectious and chronic diseases, especially Campylobacter jejuni gastroenteritis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). His work on C. jejuni focuses on Campylobacter pathogenesis, pathogen-host interactions, stress responses and host immunity. His research program on the human microbiome tackles the fundamental questions on the causative role of the intestinal microbiota in chronic and infectious diseases providing avenues for diagnostics and therapeutic modalities aimed at restoring or maintaining a healthy microbiota. 

Dr. Stintzi has published over 61 articles and book chapters and has contributed to more than 130 scientific and educational conferences. 

Dr. Stintzi currently leads a large Genome Canada team grant entitled “The Microbiota at the Intestinal Mucose-Luminal Interface: A Gateway to Personalized Health”. As part of this research project he established collaborations with investigators with multidisciplinary skill sets and expertise ranging from clinical to basic science. To ensure that his scientific objectives and experimental plans are aligned with potential commercial outcomes and requirements and legal regulations for clinical use, he also established collaborations with commercial partners and is in the process of starting up a spin-off company. 

Dr. Stintzi’s professional accomplishments include membership on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. He is an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology and Microbiology Open. In addition, Dr. Stintzi has participated as a member or as an invited reviewer to numerous national and international grant review panels from Canada (CIHR), the US (NIH and USDA), Ireland (Health Research board), Italy (Instituto Pasteur-Fondazione) and the UK (BBSRC) among others.