Molecular Microbiology is proud to sponsor this year's BLAST XVIII meeting and provide an Outstanding Talk and Outstanding Poster Presentation prizes. The prize winners were selected by a committee appointed by the meeting organizers and we are thrilled to announce the winners.

In this News, we had a chat with Sarah Monard (S.M.) and Wendy Le Mouellic (W.L.M.), infection biologists and rising stars form the Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology (Toulouse, France). Sarah and Wendy were co-laureates of the best talk awards sponsored by Molecular Microbiology at the MycoDays 2024 Meeting (Lille, France) and have accepted to answer few questions for our journal.

Click here to read our interview with Molecular Parasitology Meeting poster award winner Ben LiffnerThe Molecular Parasitology Meeting (MPM) (https://www.parasitesrule.com) was first convened in 1990 (Borst and Nussenzweig, 1992; Matthews, 2015). Today, it remains the largest, annual, international molecular parasitology conference, and this year MPM marked its 34th edition.

We interview Navin Jeyabalan, Gold Poster Award winner at the 6th International Conference on Enterococci.

We interview Ben Liffner, poster award winner at the 2023 Molecular Parasitology Meeting in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA.

We interview Francesca Florini, poster award winner at the 2023 Molecular Parasitology Meeting in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA.

We interview Inês Bento, poster award winner at the 2023 Molecular Parasitology Meeting in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA.

We interview Joseph Visone, poster award winner at the 2023 Molecular Parasitology Meeting in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA.

We interview Marta Mendonça Cova, poster award winner at the 2023 Molecular Parasitology Meeting in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA.

To celebrate the 125^th anniversary of the discovery of sporozoites, the motile stage of the malaria parasites injected into humans by mosquitoes, malaria researchers from all over the world convened on the 22^nd of May 2023 in Heidelberg to present recent advances in sporozoite research.

We interview Janni Harju, receipient of the ‘emerging talent in Molecular Microbiology’ award from the "Biology and Physics of the Prokaryotic Chromosome” conference.

We interview Antoine Hocher, receipient of the ‘emerging talent in Molecular Microbiology’ award from the "Biology and Physics of the Prokaryotic Chromosome” conference.

We interview Jovana Kaljević, receipient of the ‘emerging talent in Molecular Microbiology’ award from the "Biology and Physics of the Prokaryotic Chromosome” conference.

We interview Miloš Tišma, receipient of the ‘emerging talent in Molecular Microbiology’ award from the "Biology and Physics of the Prokaryotic Chromosome” conference.

Molecular Microbiology is soliciting original research and review articles for a Special Issue focused on Molecular microbiome research and microbiology.

Ben Raymond interviews Chelsea Brown, PhD student at University of Warwick for their poster entitled "Supramolecular organisation and dynamics of Mannosylated Phosphatidylinositol Lipids in the Mycobacterial Plasma Membrane".

Ben Raymond interviews David Forrest, Post-doctoral Researcher at University of Birmingham and winner of the 7th Molecular Microbiology Conference Poster Award for the poster entitled "No non-sense: Prevention of non-specific transcription in Bacillus subtilis".

Daniel Rojas interviews Pierre Santucci, Junior Editor and recently-appointed Principal Investigator at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Pierre Santucci interviews Camilla Godlee, best oral presentation award winner at the 2022 UK Cell Micro Network Meeting.

Pierre Santucci interviews Jakson (Chak Hon) Luk, poster prize award winner at the 2022 UK Cell Micro Network Meeting.