Michael in front of blue hue background

Michael Manhart, PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
RBHS, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

CABM, 306
Manhart Lab
CABM Bioinformatics Program

Education

PhD, Biophysics, Rutgers University, 2014
BS, Physics and Mathematics, Stanford University, 2009

Bio

Michael Manhart is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Department of Medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.  He is interested in the quantitative principles of biology, especially the ecology, evolution, and systems biology of microbial communities.  His long-term goal is to develop for these systems a predictive, quantitative theory to solve important microbiological problems in human health.

Before joining CABM, he was a junior group leader (Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione fellow) in the Institute of Integrative Biology at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) and the Department of Environmental Microbiology at Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology).  Prior to that he was a postdoctoral fellow (NIH NRSA fellow) in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University and completed his Ph.D. in biophysics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University.

Research Focus

Quantitative Evolutionary Microbiology: how fundamental evolutionary processes shape, and are shaped by, the ecology and cellular physiology of microbial communities

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, RWJMS

Assistant Professor of Medicine, RWJMS

Member, Rutgers University Microbiome Program

Administrative Appointments

Director of CABM Microbiome Program

Swiss National Science Foundational Ambizione Fellow, 2018

NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow, 2015

Fink J, Held N, Manhart M. Microbial population dynamics decouple growth response from environmental nutrient concentration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2023;120(2):e2207295120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2207295120.
Jasinska W, Manhart M, Lerner J, Gauthier L, Serohijos A, Bershtein S. Chromosomal barcoding of E. coli populations reveals lineage diversity dynamics at high resolution. Nature ecology & evolution. 2020;4(3):437-452. doi:10.1038/s41559-020-1103-z.
Manhart M, Shakhnovich E. Growth tradeoffs produce complex microbial communities on a single limiting resource. Nature communications. 2018;9(1):3214. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05703-6.
Manhart NCBI Link
Manhart Google Scholar Link