Michael Hoffert

My research focuses on the thermal preferences of bacteria. While temperature governs almost every aspect of bacterial life, we cannot yet grow or study most bacterial species in a lab to determine what temperatures they prefer. I use structural biology and machine learning techniques to predict bacterial growth temperatures by analyzing protein structures for signals of thermal adaptation. In the future, the tools I am developing will allow researchers to use genomic data to understand the thermal adaptation of bacteria in sensitive ecosystems, ultimately helping us forecast how microbial communities will respond to a warming world.