Michael Hunter

Dr. Michael Hunter is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia. His background is in physics, having obtained a masters in physics from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge, where he worked with Dr. Diana Fusco to model how bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) evolve, and understand how factors like spatial growth and superinfection influence their population genetics.

His current work, supervised by Dr. Carolina Tropini, centers on developing new treatments for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. He is exploring the use of bacteriophages as a targeted alternative to antibiotics, which can cause collateral damage to the gut microbiome. However, bacteriophages and bacteria co-evolve with each other, and so the safe and effective use of bacteriophages in treatments will require an understanding of how changes in the gut environment, like those that occur in IBD, affect their infection and co-evolutionary dynamics.

Recent publications.