Prof. Roman Stocker

The Stocker Lab specializes in controlling and manipulating the environment (chemical, physical) that cells experience and in directly visualizing the cells’ response to their environment. The breadth of current projects in the Stocker Lab focuses on motility and chemotaxis, but also addresses a braod range of other microbial processes:

(*) The lab has studied chemotaxis in a broad range of contexts and has unique expertise in developing assays and protocols to quantify the relative preference of a certain microbe for a certain chemical (or their repulsion from a antimicrobial, for example).

(*) Direct visualization allows us to study, in real time, the effect of antimicrobials on cells which can be of broad applicability to improved design processes for new antibiotics. The ability to manipulate gradients of antimicrobials then gives us access to an even deeper understanding of the killing dynamics

(*) The application of microfluidics (e.g., precise gradient generation) to the study of sperm cells is promising in devising new sperm screening approaches and in the context of fertility assays

(*) The ability to chemically pattern surfaces and study micro-surface interactions in a highly parallel fashion lends it self to studies of biofouling and to improved methods of testing antifouling surfaces.