Antibiotic resistance in human pathogens is a growing concern, one increasingly recognized as an ecological problem in an anthropogenic ecosystem comprising medicine, agriculture, and the built environment. Microbial ecosystems are mediators of human health and disease. The human microbiome can play a key role in host susceptibility to pathogens, in the nasal cavity for chronic infection by Staphylococcus aureus, in the gut microbiome influencing multiple infections with E. coli, as well as in the genital microbiome, influencing sexually-transmitted diseases from bacterial vaginosis to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Ecoss studies the microbial communities of the human body and the implications for disease including STDs and HIV, as well as analyzing the microbial community using bioinformatics, community ecology theory and Bayesian statistical modeling.
We study antibiotic resistance in human pathogens, genetic sampling of meat for antibiotic resistance, methods to develop a molecular database for strains of E. coli in urinary tract infections, and food safety of kosher vs non-kosher chicken.