Thaisa Cantu-Jungles is a postdoctoral researcher at the Food Science Department at Purdue University in the area of dietary fibers and the human gut microbiota. She has earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil) with a focus on characterizing chemical structures of dietary fibers from different sources and understanding how that relates to their biological functions. Since 2018 she has focused her work on the design and selection of dietary fibers to promote specific gut bacteria related to colonic and systemic health benefits. Her recent work has presented a path forward for prebiotic fibers to have a similar and intense effect across different people, based on chemical and structural characteristics of dietary fibers. As part of Bruce Hamaker’s research group at Purdue University, Thaisa’s work largely focus on aligning dietary fibers to gut bacteria for a translational application in shaping the gut microbial community towards human health.