Big Question: The Microbiome Center Workshops

Principal Investigator: Jack Gilbert, Ecology & Evolution

Funding Type: Workshop

Focus Area: Complexity

Big Idea: Communities of microbes vastly populate every ecosystem on earth yet their identity and function - as a community, and within a host - are poorly understood. The Microbiome Center aims to bring together faculty and scientists across more than 30 departments and divisions and three institutions - The University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, and the Marine Biological Laboratory - in order to understand the identity and function of microbes across environments. This group of diverse scientists bring together unique expertise in modeling, tool development, experimentation, population studies, clinical interventions, and many more. When we bring this group physically together, through workshops supported by BIG, we have the ability to ignite and significantly accelerate early stage research that crosses typical boundaries.