My research focuses on understanding how microbial communities in the respiratory tract mediate respiratory illness and health. Utilizing culture-independent techniques of microbial identification, I study how changes in the lung microbiome interact with host factors, clinical interventions and patient outcomes in order to generate and test novel mechanistic hypotheses regarding the pathogenesis of respiratory infections and inflammatory lung disease. I perform integrative translational research, spanning from molecular characterization of respiratory microbiota to animal modeling of acute lung disease to prospective trials of human subjects. My clinical research interests include the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), lung transplantation and function of the healthy human respiratory tract.