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Curtis Huttenhower, Ph.D.

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Biography
Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech.B.S. 2000Computer Science/Math/Chemistry
Carnegie Mellon UniversityM.S.2003Computer Science
Princeton UniversityPh.D. 2008Computer Science

Overview
Research

Dr. Huttenhower’s research focuses on computational biology at the intersection of microbial community function and human health. The human body carries some four pounds of microbes, primarily in the gut, and understanding their biomolecular functions, their influences on human hosts, and the metabolic and functional roles of microbial communities generally is one of the key areas of study enabled by high-throughput sequencing. First, computational methods are needed to advance functional metagenomics. How can we understand what a microbial community is doing, what small molecule metabolites or signaling mechanisms it’s employing, and how its function relates to its organismal composition? Second, our understanding of the human microbiome and its relationship with public health remains limited. Pathogens have been examined by centuries of microbiology and epidemiology, but we know relatively little about the transmission or heritability of the normal commensal microbiota, its carriage of pathogenic functionality, or its interaction with host immunity, environment, and genetics. Finally, more broadly, novel machine learning methodology is needed to leverage structured biological knowledge in high-dimensional genomic data analysis. The Huttenhower group works on a variety of computational methods for data mining in microbial communities, model organisms, pathogens, and the human genome.

In practice, this entails a combination of computational methods development for mining and integrating large multi’omic data collections, as well as biological analyses and laboratory experiments to link the microbiome in human populations to specific microbiological mechanisms. The lab has worked extensively with the NIH Human Microbiome Project to help develop the first comprehensive map of the healthy Western adult microbiome, and it currently co-leads one of the “HMP2” Centers for Characterizing the Gut Microbial Ecosystem in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. This is one of many open problems in understanding how human-associated microbial communities can be used as a means of diagnosis or therapeutic intervention on the continuum between health and disease.

Research
The research activities and funding listed below are automatically derived from NIH ExPORTER and other sources, which might result in incorrect or missing items. Faculty can login to make corrections and additions.
  1. OT2CA297578 (HUTTENHOWER, CURTIS) May 1, 2024 - Apr 30, 2025
    NIH
    PROSPECT: Pathways, Risk factors, and mOleculeS to Prevent Early-onset Colorectal Tumors
    Role: Principal Investigator
  2. T32GM135117 (LIN, XIHONG) Jul 1, 2020 - Jun 30, 2025
    NIH
    Interdisciplinary training: Statistical Genetics/Genomics and Computational Biology
    Role: Co-Principal Investigator
  3. R24DK110499 (HUTTENHOWER, CURTIS) Sep 20, 2017 - Jun 30, 2022
    NIH
    A comprehensive platform for novel therapy development from the microbiome
    Role: Principal Investigator
  4. R01CA202704 (CHAN, ANDREW T) Mar 1, 2016 - Feb 28, 2021
    NIH
    Dietary sulfur, the gut microbiome, and colorectal cancer
    Role: Co-Principal Investigator
  5. R21AI112991 (HUTTENHOWER, CURTIS) Aug 10, 2015 - Jul 31, 2018
    NIH
    Staphylococcus Aureus Carriage and the Nasal Microbiome
    Role: Principal Investigator

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Funded by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences through its Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program, grant number UL1TR002541.