Bacterial pathogens infect a wide range of hosts, impacting human health, agricultural production and other societally important biological processes. Remarkably, the human microbiome itself can resist colonization by harmful bacteria even when these bacteria are not eradicated by our antibiotics, but the exact mechanism behind this resistance is not well understood.
As a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow, Theo seeks to understand how colonization resistance emerges from the ecological interactions within a diverse microbiome.
Using a combination of modern molecular biology techniques and theoretical methods from statistical physics, Theo will determine how microbial metabolism prevents disease, guiding the development of new probiotics.
Theo will pivot from Ecology to Microbiology