Marcin Barszcz, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Department of Animal Nutrition at The Kielanowski Institute of Animal Physiology and Nutrition, Polish Academy of Sciences, and the head of the Laboratory of Analysis of the Gastrointestinal Tract Protective Barrier. He is mainly interested in determining the effects of dietary ingredients on the adaptive and innate gut immunity of animals. He performs nutritional experiments with animals fed diets supplemented with prebiotic fibres, probiotics and trace elements to unravel their mechanism of action in the organism.