email: Conrado_Adler@hms.harvard.edu

My project is part of the Sloan Foundation's "Microbiome of the Built Environment" Program. We are focusing on developing methods to establish, in controlled laboratory settings, model communities on materials used in household surfaces. Specifically, we are testing whether the pH of a surface influences the overall diversity of the microbial communities that become established there. We are also interested in determining if communities that form at different surfaces pHs are in any way different in their susceptibility to invasion by environmental fungi.