Duncan Sutherland PhD, is an intestinal immunologist based at the EPFL in Switzerland. He held research fellowships at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Australia and RIKEN Research Centre for Allergy and Immunology in Japan. Over the past 10 years, Dr. Sutherland investigated the role of archaea in mucosal health through three research pillars:

1) New analytic tools to better detect archaea in human samples
2) Cultivating ‘hard to grow’ archaea isolated from the human microbiome
3) Biological models to uncover archaea’s role in the human immune system

Archaea are microbes residing in the human gut that were neglected due to missing research methodology. Dr Sutherland collaborates with a network of scientists and clinicians internationally. Recently, Dr. Sutherland founded the EPFL-spinoff Arkaiya SA, a platform to screen and cultivate archaea strains from human populations. Dr Sutherland proposes a paradigm shift in intestinal immunology to harness archaea for human health.