Welcome to the Ward Lab at the UMass Chan Medical School!

Our group applies microbial genomic and metagenomic approaches to understand the how bacteria contribute to human heath and infectious disease, focusing on the transmission of pathogenic strains both in the hospital and in the community. At the genomic level we perform genomic analysis of patient infections, characterize potential outbreaks, and identify new strains. Applying metagenomics we pursue strain level detection of pathogens in complex communities and seek to understand the role of a healthy microbiome in preventing disease. The UMass Center for Microbiome Research is part of our group and supports multiple microbiome projects and collaborations.