My main research interest is to understand how microorganisms adapt and respond to environmental change. In my group, we integrate metagenomics, microcosm and field experiments, and machine learning to explore the environmental adaptations of bacteria to a broad range of factors, with a particular focus on the majority of bacteria that remain uncharacterized.
The interdisciplinar nature of my work, combining field studies, experiments, and predictive approaches, makes it useful to a range of fields, from invasion ecology to microbiome engineering and global change ecology.
Favourite research topics are: Genome-based prediction of microbial traits; structure-function relationships in microbial communities; functional biogeography; testing fundamental ecological theory using microbes; invasion ecology; plasmid ecology.
Projects:
-MicroDroughtPredict: Predicting bacterial adaptation to drought using genomics and machine learning
-MicroTraitPredict: Building a predictive framework of microbial traits and interactions
-doMEstiCOCO: Domesticating natural microbial communities to tackle the composition-stability-functioning challenge: A roadmap towards a robust Synthetic Ecology
-MiCropBiomes, COST Action CA22158
