In this seminar, consisting of two parts, we present an outline of our recent work in the area of networks and microbial systems.

We propose a new edge based network metric and show its importance for all networks. We also show how networks can be successfully applied to a wide variety of problems ranging from information retrieval and non-invasive diagnostics to structural optogenetics and adaptive landscapes.

Eliminating mycobacterial diseases through prevailing antibiotic-based strategies has had limited success, due to the rise of drug-resistant strains. Phage therapy is an interesting potential alternative. We show how a strategic coupling of experimental data -- with theoretical techniques drawn from delay differential equations, graph theory, discrete math and statistics -- sheds valuable insight into secondary host lethality and phage resistance in such systems.

Lastly, we provide a brief glimpse of other ongoing experimental and theoretical activity in our lab.