Our interests encompass sexually transmitted infections, antimicrobial resistance, and pandemic preparedness and response, with a goal of informing clinical practice and public health decision-making. Much of our work focuses on gonorrhea, caused by the bacterial pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae, both for addressing this urgent public health threat and as a roadmap for addressing antimicrobial resistance in other pathogens. Our work has included other bacterial pathogens, such as Streptococcus pyogenes and Staphylococcus aureus, and viral pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and mumps virus. Many themes of our work are general and can be tailored to specific pathogens: we investigate how to optimize the design and implementation of interventions–including vaccination, antibiotic use, diagnostics–and pathogen surveillance systems.

We use a combination of molecular microbiology, genomics, epidemiological and statistical tools, and mathematical modeling to understand transmission, evolution, and pathogenesis.

We strive to contribute to a healthier world through our research, training, interdisciplinary collaboration, and engagement with both local and global communities. By moving across scales from the molecular to population levels and back, we seek to expand our knowledge to provide an evidence base for the design, implementation, and evaluation of strategies to identify and mitigate infectious disease threats.