Ami Bhatt

Biography

In perpetual awe of how 'simple' microbial organisms can perturb complex, multicellular eukaryotic organisms, Ami Bhatt has chosen to dedicate her research program to inspecting, characterizing and dissecting the microbe-human interface. Nowhere is the interaction between hosts and microbes more potentially impactful than in immunocompromised hosts and global settings where infectious and environmental exposures result in drastic and sometimes fatal health consequences. Ami's group identifies problems and questions that arise in the course of routine clinical care. Often in collaboration with excellent investigators at Stanford and beyond, the group applies modern genetic, molecular and computational techniques to seek answers to these questions, better understand host-microbe interactions and decipher how perturbation of these interactions may result in human disease phenotypes.

Research Interest

a. To catalog, more completely, the components of the human microbiome in states of health and disease using high-thorughput and relatively unbiased methods such as shotgun DNA sequencing. b. To understand if shifts in the microbiome are associated with human disease phenotypes. c. If alterations in the microbiome are associated with human disease phenotypes, identify and target microbial vulnerabilities with the hope of ameliorating these disease phenotypes.