I lead an interdisciplinary group of microbiome researchers committed to understanding host-associated microbes, reducing these complex microbial ecologies to molecular mechanism, and applying these lessons to improve the practice of medicine. Our three major topics of interest right now are pharmacology, nutrition, and phage biology. While we love sequencing and gnotobiotic mice, our work is question-driven not limited to a specific approach.
Michael Weiner, MD, is a Professor Emeritus in Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Medicine, Psychiatry, and Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. He is Principal Investigator of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, which is the largest observational study in the world concerning Alzheimer's Disease. He is the former Director of the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIND) at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Dr. Wojcicki is an anthropologist and epidemiologist with an interest in early life risk factors for the development of obesity in high-risk populations. Specifically, she is interested in maternal exposures in pregnancy and early-life feeding decisions that can increase risk for obesity by age five. Additionally, she has international expertise, particularly in sub-Saharan African populations, in evaluating the relationship between nutritional factors and HIV and HHV-8 infection and progression.
Dr. Owen Wolkowitz is a clinical and translational research psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. His clinical work, teaching and research all focus on affective and anxiety disorders. He has been involved in psychiatric research for over 35 years, with an emphasis on stress-related mental illnesses such as Major Depression and PTSD, and he is presently Co-Director of the UCSF Depression Center.
Research in Allison Xu’s laboratory focuses on understanding the adaptive regulation of energy balance and glucose homeostasis in response to changes of physiologic and environmental conditions. Specifically, Allison’s lab is investigating how hypothalamic and hindbrain neurons sense and integrate peripheral hormones and nutritional signals, and how these neurons regulate feeding, energy expenditure, systemic glucose and lipid metabolism.
