As humans, we play hosts to trillions of bacterial cells that affect our mood, metabolism, immune system, and overall health. Our microbes grow up with us, and develop into a unique microbial community.
My work uses computational tools to profile and understand the way in which we shape our microbes, and how they shape us. It strives to make maps of a complex microbial landscape, so we can understand normal variation, and how changes might contribute to disease.
I received my PhD in 2015 from the University of Colorado, Boulder. My dissertation focused on analyzing the American Gut data, at the time one of the largest gut human microbiome data sets in the world. In my postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Diego, I looked at the relationship between the microbiome and neuroinflammation, working on projects related to Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis. In a second postdoc at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, I looked at the relationship with the microbiome in cancer.
I am currently an Assistant Scientist (similar to a research scientist) at Johns Hopkins University where I work on relating the microbiome to a early childhood outcomes as part of a large epidemiological study.
Gut Cartography 