 Hello and good morning, everyone. I am Eleni and I'm here with Professor Maya Rupnik. Maya is a professor at the National Laboratory of Health, Environments and Food in Slovenia, the department for microbiological research. And she also works in the University of Maribor in the Faculty of Medicine. Welcome, Maya. Good to have you here with us. Hello, everybody. Glad to be with you. So, without further ado, I will go and ask you my first question for today which is about your research. So, can you tell us a few words on what you are currently investigating? Well, our main research basically currently goes into two main areas. One is Clostridiodis difficile, because Clostridium was renamed recently. And the other part of our research is microbiota, mainly gut microbiota, but also other parts of the human body. Your talk today is going to be about Clostridium, Clostridiodis. Clostridiodis. But Clostridium is still okay. I didn't hear that the name was changed. So, yeah, about the pathogen and one health. So, it's a very interesting topic. And to be honest, I've heard those terms separately a lot of times, but never together. So, I want to ask you if you can give us a brief summary of what you're going to talk later today. Yes, this is basically the main idea of the talk is to show you that Clostridium difficile is a one health problem. And a lot of Clostridium difficile epidemiology is actually happening on the transborder region between humans and animals and environment. So, I will be talking about this and I will be also showing you that when you go to this transboundary area, there are quite some of surprises that waiting for one so very unusual strains or very unusual places where you can find the bug. So, if we specify now into the one health concept, how important in your opinion is to implement the one health concept into society and perhaps into dealing with pandemics? The interesting fact with one health is actually that this is a very old idea, but was rediscovered only recently. And we have just found that we need different approaches to solve the complex health problems. And one of the things that I see now as an important feature of one health is that field is slowly moving from this traditional combination of veterinary and medical medicine, so human medicine and it's covering more and more disciplines and more and more sectors. And with this being said, we really need to develop the ways how we will start to learn about each other and how we will start to understand each other. For instance, how microbiologists will understand somebody who is working in ecology or in waste waters or in social sciences, because everything needs to work together somehow to get the best solutions. So I think this collaboration and mutual learning is now the main challenge for one health. The collaboration aspect is also very, very important in general, and as we've seen with how we deal with the pandemic, the collaboration between different disciplines is also very important to achieve what we want to. So different sectors cannot work independently. We have to have collaboration and with collaboration comes communication, so how to communicate between the different departments. Because if you say something scientific to someone that doesn't know a lot about it, then something is lost in translation. So I agree a lot about your answer here. With the pandemic, a lot of things, as we said, had to go online. And I mean, how do you find the online world and in your opinion, what are the pros and cons of being online? Yeah, online is a strange place. So we all had the time window of adaptation. But now I think most of us really adapted to it and there are a lot of positive things. One funny positive thing is, for instance, that everybody see the slides very clearly because you see them on your computer. And another very positive thing is that a lot more people actually attend to the conferences from a lot more countries that this would usually happen, which is great. But what I'm missing and what I'm finding very, very strange is, you know, when the talk is over or when the session is over. And there is just nothing. There's no applause. There is no way to show the appreciation to the author. And I think the platforms will need to develop some sort of applause things. Yeah, I mean, I didn't actually think about the kind of appreciation to the speaker. I was kind of thinking more of with the when a session ends, then sometimes you're like, oh, then that okay, am I going to have a coffee by myself now? Yeah, I think the kind of applause is certainly important thing for online sessions. Yeah, but I think I think we have a lot of people actually working behind the scenes, for example, in the technological aspect. So I think we should tell them, you know, we need some kind of applause at the end, even like record an applause or something. But yeah, yeah, very, very interesting, very interesting. So what do you think about the FEMS Online Conference on Macrology? I'm very fond of this conference. I think it's a great idea that FEMS actually embraced the idea of having larger but more regionally oriented conferences in the years between the really large main FEMS meeting. I think great idea, pity in a way that we got into the pandemic, but there you go. Again, on the online aspect or perhaps regarding to many of our attendees today, because I know that many people that are attending this conference are going to be early career scientists. So they are just starting their scientific career. What is your piece of advice to them, perhaps something you wanted to receive when you were just starting your career? Because you're an established scientist now. So what are a few words that you can say to them? Well, in a way, it's difficult to say, to give some advices because the things have changed so much since I personally or my generation started science. For instance, in our microbiological society, national, we are often discussing these issues. Let me give you an example. When we started our career in science, then there was really a lack of information and we were really hungry for the information and we were happy to go to the meetings and happy to go to work in the laboratories outside. And we were happy of any lecture that was happening. And nowadays this is quite contrary. There is too much of everything. And so the young people really have to choose very carefully. And sometimes you really have to almost plead them to use the grounds to go outside. So my advice, I would actually like to say two things. One is that most interesting results are the wrong ones. Those that doesn't fit into your scheme, those that you didn't expect, but they keep coming back and they keep coming back and you're all frustrated because you think your experiments don't move anywhere. But those are actually the new things and the interesting things. So be happy when you get unexpected wrong results. And the other thing, I think hard work is important, but hard work is only one third of the story. So another third is just pure luck. You have to be lucky. And a very important third is networking. Nowadays, everything is about networking. And this is my advice really. Make sure that you somehow incorporate all three of them. Yeah. So it's very important, I think, in these days as well, just not to focus on only one aspect of your career. So it's hard work, it's networking, it's what you do after work. So investing in yourself, going out and exercising. So it's not just one aspect. So it's pretty important to give equal attention to all the small little things that are part of our daily lives. And ultimately, if you kind of master all those things, then it will really, really show you and push you. Instead of pulling yourself to like, I have to have results, I have to make this, I don't know, PCR work. So perhaps like being in a nice happy place, then it will push everything to kind of align to where they're supposed to be perhaps. Yeah, this is another nice part of the science is needed that you can also a little bit jungle with your daily schedule. And sometimes it's more towards the science and sometimes it's more towards other priorities. So it's nice to have a job that is not nine to five. But I think most of us basically goes into the other direction that we stretch the scientific part more and more and more. So, but on the other hand, I don't think that the young generations nowadays really have a problem with it. I think the young generation is very, very good in handling this life work balance. And sometimes the supervisors think that even too well. Yeah, it's interesting to see what perhaps the early young career scientists thinks and what the supervisor thinks. It's interesting to kind of have the two people together again in this kind of area of research again. Obviously, with a lot of local measures in the pandemic, a lot of us had to move entirely from working from home. But on a very positive note that we are going to return back normally into the labs or be able to maybe do half the day in the lab and half the day working from home. Perhaps I wanted to ask you a lab related question. So for you, what is your favorite laboratory techniques and what tips can you give us on how to master that technique? Before answering this one, I would just like to say that at my stage of career, you don't spend a lot of time in the lab anymore. It's more like the office work and management and all my attempts to spend some time in the lab ended very poorly. So I have given this up, but I do have my favorite technique. It has actually changed during the years and in my early stages of the career, I was all molecular. So it was really pro-molecular things and everything that was anyhow molecular was great. And now I have completely shifted and now the culture ring is my favorite technique. And I just like to see bacteria growing. And I like to find them in all these strange environments. And then once you have the strains, then you can do a lot of things with them and see the interactions. And you just get them know in a different light, in different aspects. So I think the culture ring is the classics of microbiology and classic states. If we go back to the question, maybe perhaps someone on early career scientists or even later on in your career, you might not have even done culture ring and sometimes you have to try and do it for the first time. So what is a piece of advice that you can give to those people starting in a new technique perhaps for the first time? Yeah, when starting a new technique or a new project even, then I think it's very important to get the right balance between the theory and praxis. We sometimes made a mistake to spend too much time in the lab and just trying to find out everything by ourselves. And at the beginning is worth to spend a little bit of time just looking at the literature, but again, not too much because very quickly you need to go and try your own things. And then again, go back to literature and so, you know, just shifting here and there. You know, we are different. Some people are very happy to try always something new and something new. And on the other side, we have those people that are more feeling more secure when they know one technique very well and then they apply it to different problems. And both things are actually both things are actually okay. Yeah, that's actually really true. I think always it's very good to understand the literature and how something works and then perhaps going and trying it out and figuring out how to do it. So, yeah, I think it's important to know how a technique works also to help us interpret the results as well. Yeah, and that's why that's why networking is so important. And also your your work environment is important. And it's nice if it is very diverse so that you have very direct access to different techniques and to people that are really good at it. Not everyone has this has this possibility. In this case, you know, you just have to find your way. And sometimes it's not so bad to have a little bit limited funds because then you invest more into thinking and then you come to maybe a very novel and new solutions. Yeah, that's interesting. But the last question I have for you today, I wanted to ask if you have worked with many different pathogens throughout your career, or was it just you focus in one? Because that's different with different people. So some people start from investigating one and then their career just takes them into a new pathogen, but perhaps you worked on only one. What is what happened in your case? This is actually the case. Yes, I started my PhD with clostridium difficile. And this was in early 90s. So you can calculate how far away this was. And since then it was always clostridium difficile. That's why I'm, I don't want to adopt. It's very hard for me to adopt the new name clostridium difficile. There is actually a funny story about this. I was at the days those days when we were still traveling, you know, and even when we were traveling and talking to each other on the flights, for instance, not spending the time on your mobiles. I was sitting next to somebody and we started to talk and, you know, the obvious conversations. So what are you doing? What are you doing? And he was in the fruit juices and I said, oh, I'm in microbiology. Oh, what in microbiology? Because he knew a little bit of it because of the fruit juices and spoilage. And I said, oh, I'm working with this one bacterium, you know, clostridium difficile. Ah, okay. And how long have you been working with it? I said, well, about 20 years. What 20 years with one tiny little bacterium? I would understand if you would work with the elephant for 20 years because he's big, you know, but no one little thing. And I said, yes, but you know, it's, this is the center, but you actually use many different techniques and you have many different questions. And you are moving from many different aspects, but it's always about this one bacterium. So yeah, funny enough. You can spend more than 20 years with one bug. But recently we moved basically because CDF is associated with disturbed microbiota. We started with the microbiota and now we are slowly, slowly shifting. Right now we are equal CDF and microbiota. And we'll see in which way we will go further. What aspect of CDF you find fascinating? I guess starting working with a bacterium, then not knowing anything about it and then you start investigating more. So what is the one thing that stayed with you, like the most interesting thing about CDF? The most interesting thing is that whatever you look at with Clostridium difficile, there is always a new, something new and a new mechanism and something unknown. And right now the very new thing is that we have the possibility to really look at the, the speciation. So how, how this entire spectrum of the strains exists. And we can really follow how this, or we are starting to understand how this very important human pathogen actually developed from the soil Clostridia. So we are very excited about this. And a lot of groups at all continents are seeing the same thing now. Yeah, that's very interesting as well. So that was the last question I had for you today. I just want again to thank you for taking the time to be with me during the interview and giving your talk later today. And thanks to you. It was pleasure. Thank you. And then one last thing before ending this, this session, just as a reminder, Professor Maya is going to be speaking on session four, microbiomes and human health at 25 plus four, about C. diff and one health. So thank you. And I'm looking forward to hear your talk. Thank you. Bye bye everybody.