Research Area: Bacteria

The Hay lab uses methods from microbial ecology, physiology, genomics, and genetics to understand how human activities affect microbes in diverse environmental settings. For instance, we study how handling of milk collection kits affects the microbiome of pumped human milk. Students will use genomics to[...]

The Kim Lab focuses on the general fields of population genetics and evolutionary biology. Dr. Kim is interested in computational problems relevant to understanding evolutionary processes and population dynamics, and in development and application of statistical methods for inference from genetic data. In addition to[...]

The Schmidt lab focuses on microbial community diversity, metabolic activity, and genome evolution in aquatic environments. Students will gain experience with microbial ecology and computational tools. As an example project, students can characterize the microbial communities in marine sediments associated with oyster beds to understand[...]

We are actively engaged in defining the signals that enable effector T cells to ‘find’ areas of infection and damage within inflamed tissues. We utilize intravital multiphoton microscopy and optogenetic tools to visualize and manipulate effector CD4+ T cells in situ. These approaches have revealed extrinsic[...]

Research in my lab probes the environmental, structural and physiological basis of bacterial survival. The majority of earth’s microbes exist in a non-growing, surival state, making it important to better understand the mechanisms underpinning this physiological state. We primarily use the environmental zoonotic pathogen, Coxiella burnetii (causative agent[...]

The Feaga Lab uses structural, biochemical, and omics approaches to study bacterial ribosomes. Our research aims to identify new protein factors that interact with ribosomes and that keep protein synthesis running smoothly. Students will use transposon mutagenesis coupled to deep sequencing (Tn-Seq) to identify genes[...]

Our research is directed at characterizing structures and biological function of biogenic small molecules (BSMs) that regulate development and immune responses in plants and animals and serve important functions with associated microbiota. Using comparative metabolomic approaches we have engaged in a comprehensive effort to characterize[...]

Dr. Schang uses small molecules with drug-like properties to probe the ways viruses cause infections. He is most interested in finding common features among the many viruses that cause disease in animals or humans, including how they enter cells and how they replicate and cause[...]

My program is focused on drug discovery and the pathogenesis of infectious human disease. We work closely with the Gates Foundation and the California Institute for Biomedical Research to run high-throughput drug screening on Mycobacterium tuberculosis within the context of the host. We also have human subjects[...]

My lab has a broad interest in the structure and function of viral envelope proteins, and how genomic mutations lead to changes in the envelope proteins and control viral pathogenesis. We primarily study influenza viruses of humans and animals, and coronaviruses, principally, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and[...]