DIRK GEVERS, PH.D.
GLOBAL HEAD, MICROBIOME SOLUTIONS
WORLD WITHOUT DISEASE ACCELERATOR
As Global Head, Microbiome Solutions, World Without Disease Accelerator (WWDA), Dirk strengthens Janssen and Johnson & Johnson leadership, scientific understanding and capabilities in this emerging area of science.
Prior to this, Dirk held a similar role as Global Head, Janssen Human Microbiome Institute. Before joining Janssen and Johnson & Johnson, he served as Senior Group Leader of Microbial Systems and Communities at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In this position, Dirk acted as a scientific liaison between different organizational components, including the Broad Institute’s data generation platforms and both clinical and analytical collaborators on a number of microbiome-related projects. Dirk’s research efforts at the Broad Institute included the characterization of the microbial imbalance associated with diseases such as Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes and colorectal cancer. He was also involved with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Human Microbiome Project (HMP), holding a leading role in the Data Analysis Working Group, consisting of over 50 investigators focused on human microbiome research.
Dirk received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Ghent University (UGent), Belgium, and completed postdoctoral training at UGent and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in bioinformatics, comparative and evolutionary genome analysis and microbial ecology.