On behalf of the University of South Florida, Institut Mérieux, and the Global Virus Network, we have the pleasure and honor to announce the second international conference on “Microbiomes, Biodiversity, and Their Impacts on Global and One Health,” which will be held on February 3rd to 5th, 2025, at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida, USA.

The second international conference is a follow-up meeting of the successful conference held in Annecy, France, in October 2023. It will bring together experts from a wide range of backgrounds: members of intergovernmental organizations (WHO, FAO) and international initiatives (Lancet Eat), experts in the microbial ecology of oceans, soils, plants, and people, specialists in nutrition and human health in relation to microbiomes, promoters, and implementers of environmentally friendly agricultural practices, and industrial players developing solutions as part of an eco-responsible agri-food chain. Indeed, as you are fully aware, traditional disciplinary boundaries need to be crossed to address the current state of oceans and soil depletion, food insecurity, global viral pandemics, and the mounting crises regarding climate change and its effects on food production, health, and global security. 

In this context, bringing together leading academic experts, organizations, and private players in health, virology, microbiology, soil and ocean analyses, sustainable agriculture, and aquaculture could foster innovative transdisciplinary approaches to accelerate regenerative solutions, with guiding frameworks from the United Nations, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and other systems thinking approaches.

The objective is to foster and nurture a genuine dialogue to be established between players from these different communities around a common issue - the characterization of microbiomes - and to highlight not only shared problems and challenges on this subject but also integrated and concrete solutions based on a better understanding of microbiomes for the implementation of eco-responsible agricultural and aquacultural practices and nutritional and therapeutic approaches beneficial to our health.

We believe this will impact and help unleash several projects and action plans that will be followed up in the future.

More details, agenda, and links to the keynote sessions