Welcome to the Yan lab in the Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and Quantitative Biology Institute at Yale! 

We are a discovery-driven research group working at the interface between microbiology,  molecular biology, physics, and engineering. In particular, we are interested in the formation of  biofilms, surface-attached bacterial communities embedded in an extracellular matrix.  We combine state-of-art imaging techniques, mutagenesis, mechanical measurements, and computer simulations to understand how bacteria build such multicellular communities cell by cell, what unique materials they use to do so, and what characteristics emerge at the level of the collective.  Ultimately, we will use our understanding of bacterial biofilms to solve biofilm-related problems in medicine and in industry and to enhance the use of beneficial biofilms.

Click here to learn more about our research!