Throughout its 150th anniversary year, GSAS is foregrounding the voices of some of its most remarkable alumni and students as they speak about their work, its impact, and their experiences at the School. 

Tami Lieberman is the Hermann L. F. von Helmholtz Career Development Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As head of the Lieberman Lab, she studies the human microbiome, defined by the National Human Genome Research Institute as “the collective genomes of the microbes (composed of bacteria, bacteriophage, fungi, protozoa, and viruses) that live inside and on the human body.” Lieberman discusses the potential of microbial therapies, how female faculty members helped her cope with the pressures of being a woman scientist at GSAS, and the close-knit community that made her PhD work fun and engaging.  

Thinking Futuristically 

There are lots of bacteria and microbes that live in and on us. Some of them are beneficial. My lab tries to understand these microbial communities, their ecology, and how we can change them. We do this by analyzing the DNA of human microbes to see how they move about in our bodies and between people. We’re looking to establish rules and principles so we can lay the framework for future work in microbial biology.

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