Relman is awarded NIH innovation grant for microbial research

Relman David Relman

CISAC co-director David Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor and professor of microbiology and immunology and chief of infectious diseases at the VA-Palo Alto, and Susan Holmes, the John Henry Samter University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and professor of statistics, will share a $6.2 million federal grant to examine the effects of perturbations in humans' microbial ecology.

They are among eight Stanford scientists to receive the Transformative Research Awards from the National Institutes of Health.

Relman and Holmes will monitor the microbial ecosystems of healthy humans before, during and after several types of planned disturbance, such as changes in diet or antibiotic administration. They will apply novel mathematical methods to the data generated from these clinical experiments and identify features associated with future stability or recovery from these disturbances, with the goal of predicting disease and restoring health.