Our research group is comprised of a methodologically diverse team of faculty and fellow investigators with backgrounds in infectious disease clinical practice, hospital epidemiology, epidemiology, medical anthropology, health psychology, spatial analysis, informatics and biostatistics.

Research in the group focuses on preventing and treating infections in the healthcare environment, as well as improved antibiotic prescribing through antibiotic stewardship. Our ultimate goal is to make hospital stays safer and free of infection. Major focuses areas for our research include:

• Preventing nosocomial COVID-19 transmission and evaluating comparative effectiveness of COVID-19 therapeutics

• Improving antimicrobial prescribing and minimizing antimicrobial resistance through Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs in inpatient and outpatient settings

• Developing novel stewardship metrics

• De-implementing prescribing of preoperative urine cultures and giving inappropriate antibiotic therapy for positive cultures in patients who are asymptomatic

• Improving environmental cleaning processes incorporating novel cleaning technology including UVC systems

• Developing methods to improve surveillance of hand hygiene compliance and testing novel interventions to improve compliance

• Developing and testing bundles of care to prevent surgical site infections

• Determining the comparative effectiveness of therapeutic options for multidrug resistant bacterial infections including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE)

• Understanding the environmental and geographic factors that increase the risk of MRSA and CRE infections

• Understanding the barriers and facilitators to adoption and implementation of infection prevention interventions