My current research involves trying to solve a problem that has plagued microbiologist for decades -- the inability to cultivate all bacterial species seen in the environment in the laboratory. This problem, dubbed the "Great Plate Count Anomaly", is of great importance because all of the beneficial things that have been a product of bacterial research (antibiotics, for example) has come from an extremely small representation of what actually exists. This leads one to suspect that if these missing species were able to be studied further, other great discoveries lay waiting.

My particular research interests involve looking at the pioneering species of the human gut microbiome in attempt to find novel growth factors for uncultured bacteria.

This project is in collaboration with the Human Microbiome Initiative (http://www.hmpdacc.org), which is an organization looking to identify the species of bacteria which reside inside of us in an attempt to fully understand the impact these microbes have on our ability to defend ourselves against pathogens and influence our general well-being. This symbiotic relationship with our "microbiome" has become an issue of utmost importance with discoveries over the past century correlating specific members of our microbiome with many significant conditions, including cancer, diabetes, and infectious disease.