The Federation of European Microbiological Societies organised, for the third time, a congress of European microbiologists. The event took place in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 28 June to 2 July 2009. The organising committee recruited several top speakers, including Nobel laureate Barry Marshall or Karl Schleifer who received the Lwoff award. The high reputation of FEMS2009 can be deduced from the fact that over 1.700 participants from more than 70 countries attended and presented 1.500 posters.

The BIOMIN Research Center was represented by Verity Ann Sattler who showed a poster on the effect of microbial feed supplementation on the gut microbiome of piglets, with a special focus on Bifidobacteria. Dieter Moll presented his research group's work on the catabolism of fumonisins by Sphingopyxis sp. MTA144. The poster was selected as one of nine, three for each of the three poster days, FEMS2009 best poster prize winners. The selection criteria were originality, quality of research, and clarity of presentation.

Research at the BIOMIN Research Center has been enjoying high reputation in the feed industry for some time, but the destinction of BIOMIN research through a poster award at a microbiology conference of that scale and significance is truly remarkable.