Mathilde Poyet and Mathieu Groussin named to TIME100 Next 2026

Once a year, the renowned American magazine TIME publishes its TIME 100 lists of the globally most influential people. In 2026, Mathilde Poyet and Mathieu Groussin of Kiel University and UKSH have made it to the TIME 100 Next list that honors future leaders in several societal fields, including science.

TIME 100 Next features, as the magazine calls it, influential rising stars, and is an important international recognition of up-and-coming leaders who contribute to shaping the future. The awards cover a broad range of societal fields from politics, arts and entertainment and also include science. Poyet and Groussin earned their spot for their ongoing efforts to conserve global microbial diversity and especially their initiative to found and sustain the Global Microbiome Conservancy (GMbC).

Over the last ten years, together with local scientists and communities, they have collected microbiome samples from more than 2,000 people across more than 70 human populations in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. From these, they have cultured and sequenced over 10,000 bacterial strains from more than 450 species groups, including some long thought impossible to grow in the lab. The GMbC collection is available to researchers worldwide.

Poyet’s and Groussin’s work shows that the gut microbiome loses diversity with industrialization, and that bacterial genomes themselves adapt to the lifestyle of their hosts. In Kiel, they are working on the question what these shifts mean for the immune system and for health, including chronic inflammation.

Congratulations to Mathilde and Mathieu on this international recognition of their work!