 Rachana Rao Battaje Postdoctoral fellow Joined August 2023 My research focuses on developing strategies to combat antimicrobial resistance. During my Ph.D., I worked on the discovery of new antibacterial agents, investigating bacterial cell division as an alternative target. Now in the QEM Lab, I focus on regulating existing antimicrobials by understanding how environmental factors shape antibiotic responses. My current project explores how nutrient availability influences the antibiotic susceptibility of pathogens, with the aim of using these findings to develop improved strategies for enhancing antibiotic efficacy. Outside the lab, I like yoga, reading, and being out in nature. |
 Dhru Desai Undergraduate student in Biomedical Engineering Joined June 2023 My work revolves around simulating gene mutations on microbial models and larger community models. |
 Smruti Dixit Graduate student in Quantitative Biomedicine Joined September 2024 I am driven by the pursuit of simple mathematical rules that govern living systems. My background involves modeling biological systems through mathematics, statistical physics, and statistics. My current work focuses on deciphering the key principles involved in the evolution of microbial cross-feeding communities. |
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 Atharv Jayprakash Undergraduate student in Data Science and Public Health Joined January 2023 I am an undergraduate in the School of Arts and Sciences studying data science and public health. I love to solve interesting problems and am interested in topics like predictive evolution. Since joining the lab in January 2023, I have worked on processing and analyzing experimental data to discover the impact of cross-feeding on microbial evolution. Additionally, I have worked on my own project investigating the impact of climate change on the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. |
 Michael Manhart Assistant professor and group leader Joined October 2018 (ETH Zurich) then January 2023 (Rutgers) My CV I am interested in the quantitative principles of biology, especially the ecology and evolution of microbial communities. My long-term goal is to develop for these systems a predictive theory, comparable to frameworks in the physical sciences, that we can use to solve important microbiological problems in human health. |
 Duhita Sant Postdoctoral fellow Joined August 2023 My research focuses on how microbial communities shape the evolution of bacteria and bacteriophages. In my Ph.D., I demonstrated that communities drive phage evolution by selecting for broad host-range phages. During my first postdoc at Oxford, I explored how environmental stress, such as pH, affects coevolutionary dynamics within natural bacterial communities, finding that these communities exhibit resilience to such perturbations. Now, in Dr. Manhart’s lab, I study how spatial dynamics and interspecies interactions shape evolutionary processes in communities of P. aeruginosa and S. aureus in cystic fibrosis by examining the impact of these interactions on mutant fitness, using transposon-insertion mutants as proxies for loss-of-function mutations. |
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 Shivali Vanodia Undergraduate student in Biology and Data Science Joined December 2023 I am a Biology and Data Science major graduating in 2026. At the QEM Lab, I study the effects of different environments and conditions on mutant fitness in E. coli. My interests revolve around the role of environmental stress in microbial growth and other data-driven biological questions! |
