Honoris Causa Doctorates 2023 and 2024: Discover Margaret McFall-Ngai's portrait

Can you tell us about the highlights of your career?

1) I had the privilege of leading and serving on a committee at the White House in Washington DC during the Obama Administration, 2015-2016.  The goal of our committee was to establish the National Microbiome Initiative.

2) I was one of 18 biologists from around the US selected to serve on the National Research Council [National Academy of Sciences (NAS)] committee, ‘The New Biology of the 21st Century’. Every 20 years the US Congress calls on the NAS to form a committee to project what areas of the field of biology will be pioneering over the next decades. The committee worked for 2.5 years in Washington DC to produce a summary document for Congress.

3) When elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, I had the privilege of speaking at the induction ceremony for the group being inducted into my class, Biological Sciences, one of 6 classes in the academy.

4) I have been awarded a fellowship for fall 2024 at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. My goal is to consider an international effort to comprehensively remodel biology education.

5) I have had sabbaticals at INSA de Lyon and California Institute of Technology, and served as an AD White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University for 6 years (2010 – 2016).

6) As an animal physiologist/biochemist, I served for 9 years as a leader of the planning committee for the American Society for Microbiology (36,000 national and international members) – 3 years as incoming chair, 3 years as chair, and 3 years as past chair.

What are the challenges of your research and the contribution of your work?

I have had two focuses over my career :

1) working to establish the squid-vibrio symbiosis as a model for the study of animal-bacterial interactions. The challenges in this endeavor have centered on learning what might work and what would be difficult in the laboratory establishment of the squid-vibrio system. We now, after 35 years of working on the symbiosis, have collaborations with labs across the US and in Europe who also now work on the association, and there are hundreds of publications on everything from ecology and evolution of the partnership to the biochemical and molecular basis of host-microbe interaction.

2) promoting microbiology as foundational to the field of biology as a whole and symbiosis as a principal character of animal systems.  Because biology has been in concentrated in very specific disciplines, from ecology to molecular biology, integrating micro- and macrobiology has presented a daunting challenge.  The international community continues to push biology in this direction by the activities of leaders in the field, such as the academics here in Lyon.

What relationships have you developed with Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1?

The University of Lyon, particularly Université Claude Bernard and INSA de Lyon, have been foundational leaders in the field of symbiosis over the last 40-50 years. My partner, Edward Ruby, and I, had the opportunity to present our very first findings on the squid-vibrio system at the Endocytobiology meetings hosted here in Lyon in 1989. Then, in 2022, I had the opportunity to present a keynote talk at the International Symbiosis Society meeting that was hosted here in Lyon. I have worked with groups at these institutions, particularly during a sabbatical, and have recruited postdoctoral fellows from the labs of colleagues here.

What does receiving the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University mean to you?

It is a tremendous honor and privilege to be awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa. My interactions with the univerity and colleagues there have been a major force in shaping my career. I will be eternally grateful.