Bacteriophages (the work “phage” is from the Greek word φαγεῖν (phagein), which means “to devour”) are virus that uniquely target and kill bacteria. These phages have re-emerged as a highly interesting approach to treat bacterial infection, and in particular bacteria that display antibiotic resistance. In our lab, we develop and use phage-bacteria evolution platforms to investigate how phages and bacteria interact.

Our work includes both hardware and software engineering, computational modeling and wet-lab experiments. In addition to basic research in phage-host evolutionary mechanisms, we are also exploring the potential for using phages to combat bacteria in different real-life settings.