BME PhD Prospectus Defense: Johnathan Muhvich

Title: "Understanding bacterial community influence on the development of antibiotic resistance"

Advisory Committee: Dr. Muhammad Zaman, PhD - BME (Advisor) Dr. Mary Dunlop, PhD - BME (Chair) Dr. Kayoko Shioda, PhD - School of Public Health Dr. Daniel Segre , PhD - Biology and BME

Abstract: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a process whereby bacteria no longer respond to antibiotics, is a major global health challenge that affects over 2 million people a year in the U.S. alone. Estimates suggest that it may lead to nearly 10 million deaths per year by 2050. Understanding and developing robust approaches to tackle AMR require a multi-faceted approach encompassing humans, animals and the environment. While clinical and agricultural effects and causes of AMR are well studied and understood, the environmental factors are not. Furthermore, in vitro model bacteria are typically studied as monocultures and provide limited understanding of complex interactions in native like environments, where bacterial communities are diverse, dynamic, and the bacteria will cooperate or compete with one another. This is particularly true in wastewater systems that have increasingly been recognized for their role in facilitating AMR. However, reproducible and reliable models to study bacterial interactions in complex settings are lacking. This proposal, on one hand, aims to bridge this gap and develop reliable models to study bacterial systems in complex environmental settings such as wastewater, and on the other analyzes how environmental factors contribute to development of AMR in model systems. Finally, we hope to extend this work to real-world settings including urban slums and migrant settings.