What do we do?

Short answer: We investigate how interactions and feedback shape bacterial responses to environmental stress across scales. By combining quantitative experiments with theoretical and computational frameworks, we reveal how individual variability, cooperation, and spatial structure govern phenomena such as range expansions, starvation survival, and antibiotic resistance.

Long answer: Bacterial systems are complex systems far-from equilibrium due to their interactions with the environment. Self-replication, self-regulated active mobility, and evolvability (i.e., the ability to mutate and be selected by the environment) are what distinguish bacteria from inanimate material. In nature, bacteria frequently encounter environmental changes such as fluctuating nutrient levels, antibiotic exposure, and mobility-impeding surface attachment. How do environmental changes and cell-cell and cell-environment feedback shape dynamics and evolution of bacterial systems? Our work revolves around answering this broad question and generally utilizes a combination of physics-based mathematical modeling, machine learning, experimental microbiology, and synthetic biology. Our work offers insights to antibiotic resistance, infectious diseases, biofilm formation, range expansions, and microbial engineering, with broader implications for the dynamics and evolution of far-from-equilibrium systems. 

"One cannot step into the same river twice." --associated with Heraclitus of Ephesus