Research Themes
The Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences joins faculty, postdoctoral scholars and graduate students from across the University of Maryland in pursuit of a deeper understanding of complex microbial communities, and how those microbiomes interact with each other and with our ecosystem, impacting human health, animal health and environmental health.
Human Health Advancement
Researchers in the Center study the impact of microbial communities on human health along a broad set of dimensions.
Environmental and Agricultural Innovation
Research in this space focuses on the complex interactions, mediated by microbes, between agricultural and environmental systems.
Technology Development
A unique feature of our center is the strong focus on the development of new technologies for extracting and analyzing data from microbial communities and for engineering microbial systems. This research includes the development of new sensing modalities, methods for engineering microbiome systems, and novel computational and statistical analysis methods.
Quantitative Microbial Dynamics and Ecosystems
The way in which a microbiome is shaped by the complex interactions between its members, and by the interactions between the microbiome and its environment or host, cannot be effectively understood without the development of complex mathematical models of genome evolution and system dynamics.