The mission of the University of Michigan Host Microbiome Initiative (HMI) is to foster discoveries on the roles of microbes in human health and disease. This initiative builds upon long-standing strengths in microbiology, microbial pathogenesis, immunology and clinical medicine at the University of Michigan and leverages international developments in technology and initiatives to accelerate our understanding of microbiomes.
The UM Host-Microbiome Initiative (HMI) was initiated in 2012 with generous funding from Michigan Medicine. Harry Mobley, chairman of the Department of Microbiology & Immunology and Vincent Young from the Infectious Diseases Division of the Department of Internal Medicine were the founding leaders of the HMI. The HMI supported the hiring of three new faculty members Nicole Koropatkin, Evan Snitkin, and Thomas Schmidt - HMI’s current director.
Central to HMI’s mission is the Microbiome Core – a state-of-the-art facility to enable high throughput analysis of microbiomes. The HMI also sponsors a bi-weekly seminar series and has initiated the creation of a central database to facilitate comparisons of microbiomes.
Please feel free to contact me with ideas, questions or suggestions about how we might better lead the way to discoveries in the incredible world of host-associated microbes.
Tom Schmidt
schmidti@umich.edu