Research
Finding remediators of human-made artifacts
Microbes constantly evolve in response to changes in their environment. Our lab seeks to discover how environmental microbes change in response to anthropogenic materials. We use metagenomic and metabolomic assays, combined with AI, to find new genes that microbes use to evade and metabolize pollutants. Using high-throughput screening and automation we validate our findings in the lab.
Understanding microbial ecosystem stability
Microbial ecosystems can suffer collapses when exposed to external perturbation, but the probability to collapse depends not only on the perturbation, but also on the resilience of the ecosystem. Our lab studies the stability of microbial ecosystems and how it is affected by human-made perturbations, in order to predict and prevent ecosystem collapses. We use simple experiments, sampling of natural microbial populations, and machine learning models.