Overview
The You lab uses a combination of mathematical modeling, machine learning, and quantitative experiments to elucidate principles underlying the dynamics of microbial communities in time and space and to control these dynamics for applications in computation, engineering, and medicine.
Current Duke Appointments & Affiliations
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
·
2019 - Present
Biomedical Engineering,
Pratt School of Engineering
James L. Meriam Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering
·
2021 - Present
Biomedical Engineering,
Pratt School of Engineering
Director of the Center for Quantitative Biology and Machine Learning
·
2020 - Present
Pratt School of Engineering
Professor in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
·
2021 - Present
Molecular Genetics and Microbiology,
Basic Science Departments
Recent Scholarly Works
Engineering microbial consortia for distributed signal processing.
Journal article Nat Commun · July 18, 2026 A central goal in biology is to infer input signals from measurable readouts. Engineered biosensors are usually built to respond selectively to single inputs, so crosstalk between sensors must be removed through laborious, context-specific orthogonalizatio ... Full text Link to item CiteIntegrating theory and machine learning to reveal determinants of plasmid copy number.
Journal article Nature communications · April 2026 Plasmids are extrachromosomal mobile genetic elements whose copy numbers (PCNs) critically influence microbial evolution, antibiotic resistance and pathogenicity. Despite their importance and immense diversity, the ecological, evolutionary and molecular fa ... Full text CiteSpatial proximity dictates bacterial competition and expansion in microbial communities.
Journal article Nat Commun · December 4, 2025 In microbial communities, bacteria can inhibit or facilitate each other by altering their shared environment. Most studies of these interactions have focused on well-mixed environments, leaving spatial effects underexplored. Here, we show that in an antibi ... Full text Link to item CiteRecent Grants
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Training Grant
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEMentor · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2026 - 2031Tradeoffs between fitness costs and transfer rates in horizontal gene transfer
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases · 2022 - 2027Bacterial antibiotic response and population dynamics in microscopic surface wetness
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by US-Israel Binational Science Foundation · 2022 - 2027View All Grants
Education
University of Wisconsin, Madison ·
2002
Ph.D.
University of Science and Technology of China (China) ·
1997
M.S.
Chengdu University of Science and Technology (China) ·
1994
B.S.E.