I am interested in the multispecies microbial community that forms the gut microbiota and how it can protect us against pathogens. My experimental work focuses on two key questions. First, the ecology of the gut microbiota: how do commensal species interact with invading pathogens and can probiotic communities be engineered to inhibit them? Second, how do these probiotic communities and pathogens co-evolve over time? I use Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and Klebsiella pneumoniae as model pathogens in my research.