Our lab studies how pathogens evolve and spread. We use experimental and computational tools to test our hypotheses, and collaborate with clinical and public health institutions. We focus on questions of antibiotic resistance, within-host evolution and between-host transmission, and pathogen response to host immune pressures. Our overall aim is to improve diagnostics, therapeutics, and clinical and public health strategies to aid in the control of infectious diseases.
Updates from the Lab
April 2024: Welcome to Bailey Bowcutt, who officially joins the lab as a graduate student! We are so excited to have you as a part of the lab and to learn with you over the next few years!
Congratulations to many lab members on the publication of their papers: Maddy on Spatiotemporal Trends in Group A Streptococcal Pharyngitis in the United States published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Kirstin and Stephen on Drivers of geographic patterns in outpatient antibiotic prescribing in the United States published in Clinical Infectious Diseases; Jason on Optimal environmental testing frequency for outbreak surveillance published in Epidemics; and QinQin on Assessment of sewer connectivity in the United States and its implications for equity in wastewater-based epidemiology in press at PLOS Global Public Health! Mui and Yonatan traveled to the UK to attend the Antimicrobial Resistance – Genomes, Big Data and Emerging Technologies conference held at the Wellcome Sanger Institute where Mui presented her awesome work on the longitudinal genomic epidemiology of bacteremia in Calgary, Canada!
The lab had a successful pi day celebration, where many pies were baked, eaten, measured, and used as inspiration for pi-kus! Many of us may have had to roll back home after all of the delicious pies that we ate!
November 2023: There are many wonderful pieces of news to share from this month! First, congratulations to Yonatan on becoming a tenured professor!!! Thank you for all that you do in keeping the lab running and thriving! We are thrilled to be able to keep doing the research that we all love with an amazing group of people to continue advancing our understanding of pathogen evolution, transmission, and control! Second, congratulations to Aishani on winning the Rhodes scholarship!!! This is so incredibly well-deserved and we are so thrilled and excited for you for you as you start to embark on this next chapter of your career!
Welcome to two new postdocs, Aditi Mukherjee and David Helekal! We are so excited to have you in the group and to work with you!
A new preprint from Maddy defines spatiotemporal trends of group A streptococcus in the U.S. We are so proud of you, Maddy, for the incredible work that you have done on this project (which is also the first publication of her PhD!) and for defining a whole new and exciting direction of research in the lab!
Tse Yang, Mui, Maddy, and QinQin attended Epidemics and had an amazing time learning about the latest work in mathematical modeling of infectious diseases, genomics, and phylodynamics, presenting their work, and meeting new and old colleagues!