Baptiste Leroy is an associate professor in the Laboratory of Proteomics and Microbiology at the University of Mons in Belgium. He has been studying fundamental aspects of metabolism in cyanobacteria and purple bacteria. In recent years, he has focused his research activities on carbon metabolism and redox homeostasis in phototrophic purple bacteria (PPB), aiming to understand how these fascinating organisms can thrive under diverse environmental conditions.
This knowledge is now being applied to develop cultivation strategies to produce food- and feed-grade PPB biomass using by-products from the food industry. Recently, he co-founded a startup company called PurpleTech, with the goal of developing innovative, health-promoting ingredients derived from raw PPB biomass for food and feed applications.
Today, he co-leads this young company and coordinates several international projects aimed at evaluating the health-promoting properties of PPB, notably within ambitious initiatives such as PROTEBoost (Foodwal – Win4Excellence) and Purple4Life (CBE-JU, Horizon EU). He is also an active member of the PurpleGain COST Action.

PROTEBoost https://www.foodwal.be/proteboost/
https://purple4life.eu/
https://purplegain.eu/

Prof. dr Maria Barbosa is Professor in Bioprocess Engineering and is Director of AlgaePARC (www.AlgaePARC.com) at Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands.
She has been president of the Dutch Biotechnology Association (NBV). She holds a PhD in Bioprocess Engineering obtained at Wageningen University. She has worked at ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland, IBET, and at EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation), Germany.
She presently leads the group on microalgal biotechnology and coordinates several large research programs covering the entire microalgae production chain and applications in the food and feed sectors.
Her scientific interests are in microalgae strain improvement, cultivation and scale-up.

Dr. Gabriel Capson-Tojo is a researcher at the Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE-LBE), where he heads the Process Engineering and Integration group.
His academic journey began with a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Santiago de Compostela, followed by an Erasmus Mundus MSc in Environmental Engineering from Ghent University. After earning his PhD from INRAE-LBE in 2017, Gabriel expanded his expertise through postdoctoral roles at Suez (CIRSEE), the USC Biogroup, and the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Queensland.
Since 2019, Gabriel has dedicated his research to the advancement of Purple Phototrophic Bacteria (PPB) biotechnology. His work has covered various key novel aspects, from mechanistic modeling and system ecology to up-scaling and diazotrophy. While his previous work at UQ focused on direct resource recovery from wastewater, his current research at LBE pioneers the generation of high-value products from gaseous streams using PNSB.

Koenraad Muylaert (19.03.1972) obtained a degree in MSc Biology at University Gent (Belgium) in 1996 and a PhD at the same university in 1999. After obtaining his PhD, he continued to work as an FWO post-doctoral researcher at University Gent until he obtained a professorship at KU Leuven University in 2007 where he is now full professor. His research focuses on eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems and biotechnological applications of microalgae. His work on microalgae biotechnology focused on an important challenge in the microalgae industry: developing low-cost and sustainable technologies for harvesting microalgae. His group has in the past years been highly active in flocculation-based harvesting of microalgae, doing pioneering work exploring several novel flocculation technologies.
https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0001-9645-4063

Dr. Victor Monsalvo is Head of the Eco-efficiency Area at the Innovation and Technology Department of Aqualia. He leads an active team working on wastewater treatment and reuse, biowastes and biogas management, processes involved in drinking water and desalination. He got his PhD on Chemical Engineering from University Autonoma de Madrid and got a position as Assistant Professor in Chemical Eng. Department from 2005 to 2014, and visiting researcher in different Universities: Leeds (2007), Cranfield (2009), Sydney (2011) and Aachen (2013). Then, he was appointed as Head of Technological Area – Water in Abengoa Research until 2016. Involved in more than 50 public and private innovation projects, and he has directed R&D contracts with private companies, (co) authored 8 patents (national and international), around 110 journal and referred conference papers, 1 book chapter and edited 4 books. He has collaborated with different public and private entities on the organization and promotion of numerous national and international scientific and technical conferences. He has received 8 national and international awards and recognitions.