ASM Microbe Conference: 'Great Migration of Microbiologists'

During the ongoing ASM Microbe 2025 conference, ASM CEO Stefano Bertuzzi, PhD, MPH, says the meeting is the “great migration of microbiologists” and offers something for everyone in the field.

“It spans the whole microbial sciences,” Bertuzzi said. "That's the strength of this meeting—covering everything that is microbiology.”

He also talks about the cutting-edge conference program being offered at the meeting.

“We have a robust program looking at new antibiotics that are now like halicin, which is in the very early stages of discovery and is being completely designed and found through artificial intelligence (AI).”

One specific example of this is the 2025 ASM President’s Forum. The forum highlighted how AI is transforming microbiological discovery. After opening remarks by ASM President Theresa Koehler, PhD, the session featured 3 researchers who explored cutting-edge applications of AI across microbial science, from decoding genomes to drug development.

Prior to joining ASM, Bertuzzi was the executive director at the American Society for Cell Biology for 3 years and was a senior scientific executive at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he served as Director of the Office of Science Policy, Planning, and Communications at the National Institute of Mental Health and as a science policy advisor to the NIH Director, Elias Zerhouni, MD.¹

Bertuzzi also highlights a session he attended that was given by 2025 ASM Lifetime Achievement Award winner Susan Weiss, PhD, and the significance of basic science research.

“I was listening to this very important talk of how someone started studying coronaviruses 45 years ago, when most people never heard of them,” Bertuzzi said. “Well, that is why basic science, or fundamental science, as we call it now, is so important. We were able to have vaccines so quickly, because of people like Dr. Weiss studying [these viruses] when no one thought of doing that.”

In thinking about next year, the 2026 conference is going to be held in Washington DC, and Bertuzzi says they are trying a different format that is unique for the annual meeting.

“Next year, we're trying something new, which is splitting the meeting into 3 separate meetings. One is going to be about health; one is going to be about applied and environmental microbiology; and one is going to be about fundamental microbiology,” Bertuzzi said. “And so this would be a way of creating a more intimate and community-owned meeting, so people don't get dispersed in a bigger meeting, but at the same time, having it co-located and with one single registration for all 3 meetings. It will still allow that cross pollination. It's so important because science is actually converging; it is not diverging.”

Reference
1. Stefano Bertuzzi, Ph.D., MPH. ASM. Accessed June 22, 2025.
https://asm.org/biographies/stefano-bertuzzi