About Us

The International Microbiome and Multi-Omics Standards Alliance (IMMSA) is a non-hierarchical association of microbiome-focused researchers from industry, academia, and government. IMMSA was formed for the mutual benefit of the entire microbiome community and will focus specifically on coordinating cross-cutting efforts that address microbiome measurement challenges. IMMSA members are representative experts for all major microbiological ecosystems (e.g. human/animal, built, and environmental ecosystems) and are representative experts from various scientific disciplines including microbiology, genomics, metagenomics, epidemiology, metabolomics, bioinformatics, and statistics. This will naturally expand as the science evolves.

While remaining non-hierarchical, IMMSA will consist of a steering committee that oversees the activities of the alliance as well as defines and implements the major directives of the alliance. We will also recruit and recognize members who are an active part of the above communities and have shared interest in microbiome measurement challenges.

IMMSA recognizes other active microbiome “standards” consortia. It is not the mission of IMMSA to replace or duplicate the efforts of previous consortia that have, or have had, a similar mission. Rather IMMSA will stay informed of these efforts and will build an overarching knowledge-base of all related activities that can be shared in order to mutually benefit the entire microbiome community.