Nadja Larsen

CV

Education

1996 – 2002      M.Sc. Food Science and Technology, Technical University, Lyngby, Denmark 

Professional positions

2010 - up to now    Post Doc at FOOD/KU

2002 – 2010          Research assistant and PhD student at the Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen (FOOD/KU). PhD project was a part of Danish Strategic Research project “Associations between the diet, the composition of microbiota of the intestinal tract, human health and wellbeing”. 

Qualifications: Main scientific areas: probiotic bacteria, pathogenic bacteria, bacterial and host-bacterial interactions, intestinal microbiota, phenotypic and genotypic bacterial characterization, metagenomic and transcriptomic studies, dairy fermentations. 

Main research projects

2015 – up to now: Bioactive components from by-products of food processing used in a synbiotic approach for improving human health and well-being (BioSyn) - Brazilian-Danish Strategic Research Cooperation within Food Science.

2002 – 2014: (a) Diversity and dynamic of the human gastrointestinal microbiota as affected by probiotic bacteria and chronic low grade inflammation; (b) Probiotic bacteria, interactions with the cellular immune system and beneficial effects on the immune status in newborn children; (c) Towards the optimization of probiotic foods: Identification of microbial adhesion proteins using convergent evolution and phage display; (d) GeneQuant – Virulence potential of Listeria monocytogenes in cheese; (e) Early events in L. lactis as a measure of starter culture activity; (f) Screening of potential probiotic Bacillus strains for use in animal production

Current research

• Probiotic bacteria, prebiotics
• Intestinal microbiota
• Metagenomic and transcriptomic studies
• Food-associated pathogenic bacteria