Grand Challenges: Microbiome Sciences

February 10, 2026
MicroSocial Seminar Series, BRB 1103, 3:30–4:30 p.m.
The MicroSocial Seminar Series aims to facilitate scientific exchange and community building across the University of Maryland's microbiome research community. Seminars feature short talks by students and faculty, followed by 30 minutes of informal socializing over coffee and snacks.
Talk Title: “Pollution, the microbiome and asthma: How are they linked?”
Speaker: Norberto Gonzalez-Juarbe, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, UMD

February 24, 2026
MicroSocial Seminar Series, BRB 1103, 3:30–4:30 p.m.
The MicroSocial Seminar Series aims to facilitate scientific exchange and community building across the University of Maryland's microbiome research community. Seminars feature short talks by students and faculty, followed by 30 minutes of informal socializing over coffee and snacks.
Talk Title: “Engineering bacterial multicellular structures for therapeutic applications”
Speaker: Varunaa Sri Hemanth Kumar, Graduate Student
Talk Title: “Richness, Resources, and Resistance: How environment drives colonization resistance”
Speaker: Ethan Rappaport, Postbac, Department of Biology

March 10, 2026
MicroSocial Seminar Series, BRB 1103, 3:30–4:30 p.m.
The MicroSocial Seminar Series aims to facilitate scientific exchange and community building across the University of Maryland's microbiome research community. Seminars feature short talks by students and faculty, followed by 30 minutes of informal socializing over coffee and snacks. Speaker: Marcus Fedarko, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
Talk Title: "Hierarchical Decomposition and Visualization of Metagenome Assembly Graphs"

March 20, 2026
Annual M3 Microbiome Symposium
The annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Microbiome Meet-up (M3) initiative aims to enable and spur interactions within the very broad community of scientists interested in microbiome within the Mid-Atlantic region, including academia, government, and industry participants alike. Visit the Microbiome website for more information.

April 7, 2026
MicroSocial Seminar Series, BRB 1103, 3:30–4:30 p.m.
The MicroSocial Seminar Series aims to facilitate scientific exchange and community building across the University of Maryland's microbiome research community. Seminars feature short talks by students and faculty, followed by 30 minutes of informal socializing over coffee and snacks. Speaker: Julia Segre, NIH Distinguished Investigator, Translational and Functional Genomics Branch, NIH-NHGRI

Complex microbial communities (known as microbiomes) inhabit virtually every part of our planet—from ocean depths to mountaintops, across vegetation surfaces, within agricultural soil, and both on and within all living creatures. The Microbiome Sciences initiative 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.

The initiative will conduct transformative research, develop new technologies, advance microbiome science, and translate microbiome science into innovative interventions and economic growth. Its three-part mission includes:

Advancing cutting-edge and transformative interdisciplinary research in microbiome sciences.
Training future generations of scientists and helping develop a regional workforce with strong expertise in microbiome sciences.
Supporting the development of a regional innovation ecosystem that contributes to economic growth in microbiome-related industries within Maryland.

University of Maryland Microbiome Initiative

Human Health Advancement

Key participants: Birthe Kjellerup (lead), Ryan Blaustein, Brantley Hall, Katharina Maisel, Shirley Micallef, Margaret Slavin, Magaly Toro, and Hannah Zierden

Researchers in the Center study the impact of microbial communities on human health along a broad set of dimensions. Projects include research on human nutrition, food safety, biomimetic therapies, and wastewater surveillance.

Environmental and Agricultural Innovation

Key participants: Stephanie Yarwood (lead), Ryan Blaustein, Mostafa Ghanem, Birthe Kjellerup, Shirley Micallef and Magaly Toro

Research in this space focuses on the complex interactions, mediated by microbes, between agricultural and environmental systems. Some examples of projects include studies of soil microbial ecology and function, bioremediation of pollutants, the interaction between urban farming and food safety, and the protection of poultry from pathogens.

Technology Development

Key participants: Mihai Pop (lead), Bill Bentley, Brantley Hall, Reza Ghodssi, Huang Lin, Katharina Maisel, Sara Molinari, and Hannah Zierden

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

Key participants: Joshua Weitz (lead), Huang Lin, and Mihai Pop

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. Some of the research performed in the center, for example, explores the way in which the complex interactions between phages (viruses that infect bacteria) and microbes can be used to treat antibiotic-resistant infections.

Team Members:

PI: Mihai Pop (CMNS), Professor and Director, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies	Mostafa Ghanem (AGNR), Assistant Professor, Veterinary Medicine	Birthe Kjellerup (ENGR), Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Shirley Micallef (AGNR), Professor, Plant Science and Center for Food Safety and Security Systems	Brantley Hall (CMNS), Assistant Professor, Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics
William Bentley (ENGR), Robert E. Fischell Distinguished Professor, Director, Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices, and Director, Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute	Reza Ghodssi (ENGR), Professor, Herbert Rabin Distinguished Chair in Engineering	Katharina Maisel (ENGR), Assistant Professor, Bioengineering	Stephanie Yarwood (AGNR), Associate Professor, Environmental Science and Technology	Ryan Blaustein (AGNR), Assistant Professor, Nutrition and Food Science
Hannah Zierden (ENGR), Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	Margaret Slavin (AGNR), Associate Professor, Nutrition and Food Science	Diana Obanda (AGNR), Assistant Professor, Nutrition and Food Science	Gabi Steinbach (CMNS), Program Coordinator and Associate Research Scientist	Sara Molinari (ENGR), Assistant Professor, Bioengineering
Huang Lin (SPHL), Assistant Professor, Biostatistics	Magaly Toro (JIFSAN), Director, Center for Food Safety and Security Systems	Norberto Gonzalez-Juarbe (CMNS), Assistant Professor of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics
Monika Proszkowiec Weglarz, Molecular Biologist, USDA	Jude Maul, Research Ecologist, USDA

Partnerships:

Mid-Atlantic Microbiome Meet-up (M3) Consortium