#BlackInCompBio Seminar Series: Ariangela Kozik, PhD (Univ. Michigan)

"Microorganisms (Bacteria, Viruses, and Fungi) inhabit nearly every environment on Earth. They are critical components of many ecosystems, but there is so much we don’t yet know about how they interact. I’m fascinated by the human microbiome, its variation across populations, and its role in health and disease. Key questions remain:

• What are the forces involved in controlling the replication, death, and movement of microbes in the body?
• How do our behaviors (diet, stress, exercise, medications, other illnesses, etc.) impact the ability of our resident microbes to survive? How do they impact their interactions with us and others?
• How does the human microbiome organize into communities? How does it interact with other systems, like the immune system and built environment?.
• What are the trans-kingdom interactions at play in the human microbiome? Do they influence disease states?

I use bioinformatics to ask these and other questions of the respiratory and gut microbiomes in the context of inflammatory disease. I am particularly interested in the application of systems-based frameworks and biopsychosocial models to integrate ‘omics’ data with host data for a more complete view of host-environment-microbiome relationships."