News & Events | Carmody Laboratory

May 13, 2026

Rachel gave an invited talk (“Gut microbiome plasticity and human adaptability in changing environments”) at the Bridging Horizons Symposium for Planetary Healthspan, convened jointly by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Sciences and held at The Royal Society of London. London, UK.

May 7, 2026

Congratulations to graduate student Emily Venable on the successful defense of her Ph.D. dissertation (“High-quality diets and endurance running as ecological drivers that shape human gut microbial structure and function”)! Emily is off to a coveted position as a Life Science Specialist at L.E.K. Consulting!

May 6, 2026

Congratulations to graduate student John Kahumbu on passing his qualifying exam!

April 24, 2026

Amar and Rachel’s paper exploring how microbiome variation is shaped by metacommunity processes that explain biodiversity on geological islands (“The Island Biology of the Host Microbiome”) is out today in Trends in Microbiology!

April 20, 2026

Congratulations to postdoc Neil Ibata on completing the Boston Marathon with an impressively fast time of 2:22:20!

March 20, 2026

Graduate student John Kahumbu gave a podium talk (“Urbanization does not always mean loss: microbiome diversity patterns in the Turkana of Kenya”) at the Annual Meeting of the Human Biology Association in Denver, CO.

February 2, 2026

Congratulations to Yi Jia (Claire) Liow on the successful defense of her Ph.D. dissertation (“Diet shapes host eating behavior via the microbiome-gut-brain axis”)! Claire will be moving on to a postdoc in the Bohórquez Lab at Duke!

January 16, 2026

Rachel gave an invited talk (“Nutritional implications of diet–microbiome–metabolism interactions”) at the Frontiers in Microbiota Interactions Symposium at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Boston, MA.

November 17, 2025

Graduate student Yi Jia (Claire) Liow presented a poster (“Polyunsaturated fatty acids promote appetite via the microbiome–gut–brain axis”) at the Microbial Sciences Initiative Symposium, Cambridge, MA.

October 9, 2025

Rachel gave an invited talk (“Only part human: Microbiome contributions to human adaptability and evolution”) at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, What Makes Us Human? – An International Symposium Celebrating 25 Years of Progress. Leipzig, Germany.

July 17, 2025

Claire, Amar, and Rachel’s paper on the mechanistic links between diet and the microbial modulation of eating behavior (“Industrialized diets modulate host eating behavior via the microbiome-gut-brain axis”) is out today in Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism!

June 9–10, 2025

The Carmody lab was well represented at the Precision Nutrition Forum and PREDIMED Omics Symposium at Harvard Medical School! Rachel gave an invited talk (“Gut microbiota and energy metabolism – implications for precision nutrition”), and posters were presented by postdoc Laura Schell (“The gut microbiome mediates the differential metabolic impacts of saturated and polyunsaturated fats”) and graduate student Emily Venable (“DNA metabarcoding as tool to index dietary digestibility and hidden components of diet”). Way to go, team!

June 3, 2025

Congratulations to Amar Sarkar on winning a 2025 Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates, one of only five awarded Harvard-wide!

May 19, 2025

Graduate student Emily Venable gave a podium talk (“DNA metabarcoding to index dietary digestibility and quantify which dietary components reach and structure the gut microbiome”) at the Harvard Chan Microbiome in Public Health Center (HCMPH) Symposium: The Microbiome in Food Systems, Boston, MA.

May 13, 2025

Rachel gave a flash-talk (“Generative AI-driven discovery linking the gut microbiome with human health”) at Harvard University’s Generative AI Symposium. Boston, MA.

May 1, 2025

Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Ludovico Rollo for winning a 2025 Hoopes Prize for his senior thesis, “The Influence of Social Dominance on the Gut Microbiome.” Congratulations also to Amar Sarkar for co-advising Ludo throughout his thesis research.

April 27, 2025

Congratulations to postdoc Neil Ibata on running a blistering 2:19:01 in the London Marathon!

April 17, 2025

Laura and Rachel’s paper showing that ingested dietary preservatives can have antimicrobial-like effects within the gut (“Dietary preservatives alter the gut microbiota in vitro and in vivo with sex-specific consequences for host metabolic development in a mouse model”) is out today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition! Katia, Cary, and Emily were also co-authors, making this a 100% Carmody lab effort!

April 9, 2025

Laura’s and Rachel’s paper on the mechanisms underpinning the connection between early-life antibiotics and adult adiposity (“An energetic framework for gut microbiome-mediated obesity induced by early-life exposure to antibiotics”) is out today in Cell Host & Microbe! (Link)

March 14, 2025

Congratulations to Ludovico Rollo on the submission of his undergraduate honors thesis (“The Influence of Social Dominance on the Gut Microbiome”), a project co-advised by Amar and Rachel.

February 26, 2025

Rachel gave an invited seminar (“Gut microbiome plasticity and human adaptability in changing environments”) in the Department of Anthropology Colloquium Series at Boston University. Boston, MA.

December 5, 2024

Rachel gave an invited seminar (“Gut microbiome plasticity and human adaptability in changing environments”) in the Center for the Study of Human Origins (CSHO) Colloquium Series at New York University. New York, NY.

November 5, 2024

Emily’s and Rachel’s paper addressing the complementary nature of host and microbiome nutritional status (“Decoupled Nutrient Status: a framework to disentangle host from microbial responses to diets that vary in digestibility”) is out today in Frontiers in Food Science and Technology! (Link)

September 30, 2024

Rachel gave an invited seminar (“Gut microbiome plasticity and human adaptability in changing environments”) at the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

July 25, 2024

Rachel’s review paper with Peter Turnbaugh and Krista Varady (“Digesting the complex metabolic effects of diet on the host and microbiome”) is out today in Cell (part of the Cell 50th Anniversary special collection on metabolism)! (Link)

July 1, 2024

Rachel gave an invited talk (“Gut microbiome plasticity and human adaptability under ecological change”) at the Applied Hologenomic Conference organized by the University of Copenhagen. Copenhagen, Denmark.

June 11, 2024

Rachel gave an invited talk (“Fired up: cooking as a catalyst for human evolution”) at the International Symposium on Fire and Human Evolution organized by the University of Leiden. Leiden, Netherlands.

January 4, 2024

Our paper on “Microbial transmission in the social microbiome and host health and disease” is out today in Cell. Congratulations to graduate student Amar Sarkar and post-baccalaureate researcher Cameron McInroy for spearheading this effort! (Link)

November 11, 2023

Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Mira-Rose Kingsbury Lee for being named a 2024 Rhodes Scholar! So exciting!

October 18, 2023

Our lab is featured in the November-December 2023 edition of Harvard Magazine. Click here for the article by Nikki Greenwood and here to see the cover art created by Sam Falconer!

August 1, 2023

Congratulations to Rachel on her promotion to Associate Professor!

July 26, 2023

Rachel’s paper with Katie Amato on “Gut microbial intersections with human ecology and evolution” is out today in Annual Review of Anthropology. (Link)

June 19, 2023

Our collaborative paper with Dan Lieberman, Steve Worthington, Orrin Devinsky, and Christine Parkent (“Comparing measured dietary variation within and between tropical hunter-gatherer groups to the Paleo Diet”) is out today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. (Link)

May 30, 2023

Our collaborative paper with the Song Lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (“The gut microbiome modifies the associations of short- and long-term physical activity with body weight changes”) is out today in Microbiome. (Link)

May 4, 2023

Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Molly Chiang for winning a 2023 Hoopes Prize for her senior thesis, “Novel DNA Metabarcoding Pipeline to Define Diet and Investigate Its Relationship with Gut Microbiome Composition in Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).” Congratulations also to Emily Venable for co-advising Molly in her thesis journey!

May 3, 2023

Rachel’s review with Jordan Bisanz (“Roles of the gut microbiome in weight management”) is out today in Nature Reviews Microbiology. (Link)

April 25, 2023

Rachel gave the keynote address at the annual Rutgers University Microbiome Program (RUMP) Retreat. An exciting day learning about diverse and outstanding new research in the microbiome sciences!

April 23, 2023

Congratulations to former undergraduate thesis writer Andrew Li on his Masters of Music from NEC in piano performance! Andrew’s degree recital — including works from Shubert, Mussorgsky and Chopin — was a spectacular exhibition of technical and musical mastery. Really unbelievable! And now, he’s off to medical school!

April 6, 2023

Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Mira-Rose Kingsbury Lee on the premiere of her original musical “Atalanta” at the ART’s Loeb Experimental Theater! (Link)

April 5, 2023

Rachel gave a special seminar at Penn State, co-hosted by the Department of Anthropology and Penn State Microbiome Center, two powerhouse programs.

March 31, 2023

Rachel gave a special seminar at UMass Amherst, co-hosted by the Department of Food Science, Department of Nutrition, and Department of Microbiology.

March 27, 2023

Rachel gave an invited seminar at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy addressing dietary influences on host-microbial interactions in health.

February 22, 2023

Our collaborative study with the Garland Lab at UC Riverside (“Weanling gut microbiota composition of a mouse model selectively bred for high voluntary wheel-running behavior”) is out today in the Journal of Experimental Biology! (Link)

October 29, 2022

Rachel gave an invited talk at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Microbiome Meeting.

August 24, 2022

Congratulations, Dr. Cary Allen-Blevins, on finishing your Ph.D.! A fitting culmination to a long and rich graduate research program focused on human variation in breastmilk oligosaccharides and their effects on infant-microbiome interactions in energy metabolism and immunity.

August 16, 2022

Our collaborative study with Mike MacArthur and others from the lab of the late James Mitchell at ETH Zurich (“Multiomics assessment of dietary protein titration reveals altered hepatic glucose utilization”) is out today in Cell Reports!

June 12, 2022

Rachel delivered an In-Depth Lecture (“Rationale and risks of rewilding: ecological plasticity of the gut microbiome as a double-edged sword”) at the American Society for Microbiology (ADM) Microbe conference.

June 6, 2022

Congratulations to our own undergraduate thesis researcher Andrew Li on making the quarterfinals of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition! Just unbelievable talent!

May 24, 2022

Rachel was part of a trio of speakers in the Charles M. Mansbach II, MD, Memorial Lecture session at the American Gastroenterological Association, Digestive Diseases Week.

May 2, 2022

Rachel has won the 2022 Roslyn Abramson Award for “excellence and sensitivity in the teaching of undergraduates” and will be allocating the $10,000 prize to undergraduate lab research and Teaching Fellow training.

April 22, 2022

Congratulations, Dr. Katia Chadaideh, on finishing your Ph.D.! We are so proud of you and look forward to benefiting from all that you will discover!

March 30, 2022

Laura and Rachel delivered talks and served as panelists in the virtual arm of the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists.

March 24, 2022

Emily and Rachel delivered podium presentations at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists in Denver, Colorado. It was so nice to see everyone in person again!

March 12, 2022

Rachel gave a plenary lecture on the gut microbial effects of food processing at the Gut Microbiome for Health World Summit in Washington, D.C.

February 11, 2022

Rachel gave a seminar on “Ecological plasticity of the gut microbiome: a double-edged sword” in the Organismic & Evolutionary Biology (OEB) Seminar Series at UMass Amherst.

October 5, 2021

Amar, Rachel, and other collaborators have a new paper out today in Trends in Molecular Medicine on the role of the gut microbiome in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 outcomes. (Link)

September 24, 2021

Our collaborative paper with the Liu Lab (Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School) on gut microbial predictors of healthy aging is out now in Nutrients. (Link)

September 21, 2021

As part of the HEB lunchtime seminar series, our lab gave a chalk talk seminar on gut microbial buffering of human energy balance and its implications for human evolution!

September 13, 2021

Our collaborative paper with the Huttenhower Lab (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) introducing SparseDOSSA2, a statistical model for describing and simulating microbial communities, is out now in PLoS Computational Biology. (Link)

July 28, 2021

Rachel will serve as a panelist in a U.S. congressional briefing on federal funding for microbiome research, organized jointly by the American Society for Nutrition and the American Society for Microbiology.

July 7, 2021

Rachel spoke with the New York Times regarding the important debate surrounding the usefulness of “rewilding” the gut microbiome. (Link)

May 4, 2021

Katia and Rachel’s perspectives paper, “Host-microbial interactions in the metabolism of different dietary fats” is out now in Cell Metabolism. (Link)

May 3, 2021

Laura will deliver a talk (“Mediation of developmental tradeoffs by early-life disruption of the gut microbiota”) at the Microbiome Epidemiology Working Group, hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

April 30, 2021

Rachel, Amar, and Aspen’s perspective “Gut microbiota through an evolutionary lens” is out now in Science. (Link)

April 21, 2021

Katia will deliver a podium talk entitled “Fats are differentially fattening: Host-microbial interactions in energy harvest from dietary lipids” at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists Virtual Meeting.

April 21, 2021

Emily will deliver a podium talk entitled “High energy expenditure causes shifts in the gut microbiota that buffer host energy balance” at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists Virtual Meeting.

April 12, 2021

Rachel will deliver a podium talk entitled “Humans and chimpanzees exhibit divergent patterns of gut microbial diversity in early life” at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists Virtual Meeting.

April 9, 2021

Katia will deliver an invited talk (“Host-microbe interactions mediate differential energy gain from dietary fat”) at the Meeting on the Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis in the Genomics Era, hosted by Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

March 31, 2021

As part of the Tufts University Biology Seminar Series, Rachel will give a talk titled “Alternative energy: gut microbial buffering of energy balance.”

March 26, 2021

Rachel will deliver a talk entitled “Ecological plasticity of the gut microbiome: a double-edged sword” at the CIFAR Annual Symposium, Humans and the Microbiome.

March 23, 2021

Rachel and Aspen spoke to the Harvard Gazette about their new paper on domestication, the gut microbiome, and human industrialization out in eLife. (Link)

March 22, 2021

Katia will deliver a talk (“Dietary fat type drives host-microbial interactions in energy gain and inflammation”) at the Microbiome Epidemiology Working Group, hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

March 10, 2021

Rachel will deliver a public talk (“Challenging cooked calorie counts considering chemistry, co-inhabitants, and consequences for public health”) at the National Academies of Science, Distinctive Voices Lecture Series. (Link)

February 22, 2021

Rachel will deliver an invited talk (“Ecological sensitivity of the gut microbiome”) at the Broom Center for Demography seminar series at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

February 8, 2021

Aspen, Emily, Rachel and other collaborators have a new paper (“Age patterning in wild chimpanzee gut microbiota diversity reveals differences from humans in early life”) out today in Current Biology.

September 1, 2020

Amar Sarkar has joined the Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Laboratory as a new graduate student! Amar comes to us via Cambridge and Oxford, where he obtained graduate training in neuroscience and the gut-brain axis. Welcome, Amar!

October 25, 2019

The newest member of the Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Laboratory has arrived! Welcome, Bennett Patrick Slyconish!

April 22, 2017

Rachel will deliver an invited lecture (“Food and its form: cooking shapes the gut microbiome”) in the Wiley Symposium at the 86th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in New Orleans.

April 15, 2017

Rachel will deliver an invited talk (“Partners in chyme: dietary manipulation of the gut microbiome”) at the 2017 Microbial Sciences Initiative Symposium.

April 6, 2017

Rachel delivered a seminar in the Department of Immunology & Microbiology at McGill University in Montreal. A 24-hour whirlwind of engaging chats with faculty and trainees, plus an opportunity to reconnect with close friends!

March 22, 2017

Rachel delivered a keynote address (“Dietary manipulation of the gut microbiome”) at the 2017 MIT-Harvard Microbiome Symposium: Health and Ventures in the Microbiome. A showcase of translational research, organized by an incredible team of students!

November 3, 2016

Rachel delivered a plenary lecture (“Cooking shapes the structure and function of the gut microbiome”) at The New York Academy of Sciences symposium on Microbial Influences in Cardio-Metabolic Diseases.

August 22, 2016

Our brand new Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Laboratory in the Peabody Museum is officially certified for occupancy. Let the research roll!

June 16, 2016

Cell Press named Rachel’s paper “Diet dominates host genotype in shaping the murine gut microbiota” to the Cell Host & Microbe “Best of 2015” list.

April 1, 2016

Rachel gave a seminar for the Evolutionary Anthropology Colloquium Series at Duke University. A wonderful opportunity to connect with colleagues and collaborators old and new!

February 11, 2016

In partnership with the Leakey Foundation, Rachel hosted a science outreach for students at Salesian High School in Richmond, California.

December 8, 2015

Rachel delivered a Leakey Foundation Lecture (“Cooking for calories: food processing and the shape of human energy gain”) at the California Academy of Sciences.

September 8, 2015

The youngest member of the Nutritional & Microbial Ecology Laboratory has arrived! Welcome, Theo Carmody Slyconish!