Know more

Patrick Veiga joined the INRAE MICALIS and MetaGenoPolis units in April 2022, as Research Director. He leads research projects aimed at better understanding the role of food in the functioning of the human intestinal ecosystem, in order to lay the scientific foundations for the development of innovations in the fields of preventive and personalized nutrition.  At MetaGenoPolis, Patrick is part of the French Gut team and is the scientific leader of the SAMBO platform, dedicated to the collection, DNA extraction, and bio-banking of fecal samples.
Patrick started his career at INRA in 2003 as a graduate student in agronomy and then joined Saulius Kulakauskas' team for a PhD on the characterization of molecular mechanisms involved in the synthesis and maturation of Lactococcus lactis peptidoglycan. After a one-year post-doc, Patrick joined Danone Nutricia Research to study the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiota. In 2011, he was appointed visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health and joined Wendy Garrett's immunology lab to characterize the effectors of certain probiotics in the context of gut inflammation. In 2014, back at Danone, he became co-leader of the gut microbiota research program and then group leader. In 2018, he and his team launched a citizen science project with Rob Knight's team (University of California San Diego) to understand the diet-gut microbiota links across 5 countries. In 2019, he is appointed scientific director. Finally, in 2021, he will pass his HDR and the INRAE competition for Director of Research. During his career, Patrick has co-authored 25 scientific publications, some of them in high impact journals (Nature Microbiology, Nature Communications, PNAS....).