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Ilana Brito utilizes systems biology approaches to study the transmission of bacterial genetic components within the human microbiome. She completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard University, where she double majored in Biology and Government. Her longstanding interest in infectious disease led her to conduct field and laboratory research on malaria in Mali. Brito earned her Ph.D. in Genetics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and subsequently received a postdoctoral fellowship at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. There, she began focusing on the transmission of viral pathogens associated with emerging infectious diseases, eventually shifting her interest towards the diverse bacteria that inhabit the human body. She has launched significant field research projects in the Fiji Islands and developed methods to analyze transmission signatures through metagenomic whole genome shotgun sequencing data at Eric Alm’s lab at MIT. Prof. Brito's lab is pioneering systems-level methods to investigate horizontal gene transfer within the human microbiome, a key mechanism driving the acquisition of antibiotic resistance by pathogens. The Brito Lab's research explores how commensal microbes interact with health and environmental aspects during transmission events by employing microbial engineering, single-cell sequencing methods, and innovative computational algorithms applied to metagenomic data for a deeper understanding of human health in relation to the microbiome.
Department of Architecture