We study what human-associated microbial communities (the “microbiome”) tell us about their host and how they affect its health. We aim to develop personalized microbiome-based and -guided therapeutics and diagnostics.
We do so by examining microbial species, genes, metabolites and other microbial factors at high throughput and resolution, and studying how they act in tandem, and along with other host factors, to reflect or affect health and disease.
… developing careful data analysis methods for microbiome data that are robust to the unique idiosyncrasies of this data, with an emphasis on generalizability. Our methods are particularly suitable for low-biomass microbial communities.
... devising and translating microbiome-based diagnostic and prognostic prediction algorithms with the potential to advance microbiome-informed healthcare.
We are ...
... studying genomic adaptation in the microbiome as a way to understand various selective pressures in the ecosystem, using sequence-graph-based and other high resolution bioinformatic methods and algorithms.
… aspiring to develop personally-tailored therapies that act through the microbiome (microbiome-based therapeutics) or to use the microbiome in order to personalize healthcare (microbiome-guided medicine).
... applying our methodology in diverse clinical settings, with a special focus on the reproductive system and adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Recent news
New paper out!
Friday, May 2, 2025
Compositional transformations can reasonably introduce phenotype-associated values into sparse features (Matters Arising to Gihawi et al., 2024)
New paper and method out in Nature Microbiology!
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Processing-bias correction with DEBIAS-M improves cross-study generalization of microbiome-based prediction models
Lab receives support from The Iris Fund!
Thursday, March 20, 2025
We are grateful to The Iris Fund for supporting our research through the Preterm Birth Prevention Center.
Lab awarded a March of Dimes Discovery Grant!
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
We are thankful to the March of Dimes for supporting our research on the vaginal immune-microbiome-metabolome axis in spontaneous preterm birth.