John F. Cryan is Professor & Chair, Dept. of Anatomy & Neuroscience, University College Cork (UCC) and has been Vice President for Research & Innovation since 2021. He is also a Principal Investigator in the APC Microbiome Institute. He received a B.Sc. (Hons) in Biochemistry and PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Galway, Ireland and was a visiting fellow at the Dept Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Australia, which was followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA and The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California. He spent four years as a Group Leader in the pharmaceutical industry with Novartis in Basel Switzerland prior to joining UCC in 2005. Prof. Cryan’s current research is focused on understanding the interaction between brain, gut & microbiome and how it applies to stress, psychiatric and immune-related disorders at key time-windows across the lifespan. Prof. Cryan has published over 700 peer-reviewed articles, co-edited four books and is co-author of the bestselling „The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection”. He has received numerous awards including from UCC, the University of Utrecht , University of Antwerp, American Gastroenterology Association, Neuroscience Ireland, Neonatal Society, European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, British Association of Psychopharmacology, Physiological Society, Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, & FASEB. He has being named on the Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher each year since 2017. He was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2017 and is Past-President of the European Behavioural Pharmacology Society. He has been a TEDMED and TEDx speaker and was profiled in the Netflix documentary Hack Your Health: The Secrets of the Gut in 2024.