As a microbial ecologist and physiologist, Prof Phil B. Pope leads the Microbial Ecology and Meta-Omics (MEMO) group and has greater than 15 years' experience using multi-omic tools to deconvolute the intimate genomic and physiological relationships between microbial populations within complex microbiomes that are integral to gut function, health and nutrition of animals. Phil has a BSc from Griffith University (Queensland, Australia) majoring in physical mathematics, with honours in environmental microbiology (2003); a PhD in metagenomics from Griffith University (2007); and postdoc experience at CSIRO with Professor Mark Morrison (2007-2010). Phil moved to Europe in 2010 as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Incoming fellow with renowned enzymologist Prof. Vincent Eijsink and started his group with an ERC starting grant in 2014. Phil’s current research seeks to expand microbiome "omic" approaches to envelop additional “molecular layers” from the animal holobiont (i.e. host genome, transcriptome and proteome), a concept otherwise known as “holo-omics”. Phil is the PI of a Novo Nordisk Fonden fellowship “SuPAcow” and coordinator for the ERA-Net project “ImprovAFish”, which both seek to modulate the feed-microbiome-host axis in cows and fish, respectively. Phil also makes central scientific and management contributions to large national and European collaborative efforts that includes work package leadership roles in two Horizon 2020 projects (HoloRuminant and 3D’omics) that are focused on animal-microbiome interactions.