Abstract:
Microbial communities underpin the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems, shaping our world and how we experience it. Conversely, microbes are also shaped by human activities, including the widespread use of antimicrobial chemicals. Understanding how microbial communities respond to these pressures is essential for mitigating antimicrobial resistance, protecting public health, and developing sustainable biotechnologies. Drawing on studies spanning hospitals, homes, wastewater treatment systems, and host-associated microbiomes, this talk will explore how microbial ecology can reveal the mechanisms by which microbes adapt, survive, and evolve in complex real-world environments.
I will present recent work investigating the fate and impacts of antimicrobial chemicals in built and natural environments, highlighting how chemical exposures reshape microbial community structure and select for resistant organisms. These studies demonstrate the value of integrating analytical chemistry, cultivation-based microbiology, genomic approaches, and ecological theory to uncover microbial processes that are often hidden in laboratory model systems.
Building on these discoveries, I will discuss efforts to develop evidence-based policy and ecology-informed strategies for microbial control and microbiome engineering. The latter include advancing bacteriophage-based therapeutics for difficult-to-treat infections and engineering phage and microbial communities for applications ranging from human health to energy-efficient wastewater treatment. Together, these projects illustrate how a mechanistic understanding of microbial ecology can be translated into innovative interventions that move beyond conventional antimicrobial approaches.
By connecting fundamental questions in microbial ecology and evolution with applied challenges in medicine, the built environment, and environmental biotechnology, this work transforms our ability to predict, manipulate, and design microbial communities for healthier and more sustainable futures.
Bio:
Dr. Erica Marie Hartmann is an environmental microbiologist interested in the interaction between anthropogenic chemicals and microorganisms, as well as bio-inspired mechanisms for controlling microbial communities. Her career began at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She then moved to Arizona State University where she was the first graduate of the interdisciplinary Biological Design PhD program. She had two postdoctoral positions, the first, supported by a Fulbright, at the Commission for Atomic Energy in France. She began leading studies on antimicrobial chemicals and microbes found in indoor dust during her second postdoc at the Biology and the Built Environment Center at the University of Oregon. She is currently an associate professor at Northwestern University in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, with affiliations in Pulmonary Medicine and the Center for Synthetic Biology. She was awarded an NSF CAREER to support her work on antimicrobial textiles and is leading an investigation of the respiratory tract microbiome in the NIH-funded Successful Clinical Response In Pneumonia Therapy (SCRIPT) Systems Biology Center. She is further designing new antimicrobial strategies based on bacteriophages.
Andrea Cehaic
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