Professor Polz studies environmental microbiology, looking at the dynamics that govern microbes’ interactions and evolution to learn the role of individual populations within the community, the range of genomic similarity that defines a functional unit, and what mechanisms govern diversification of microbial populations in the environment. His research group addresses these questions using a combination of quantitative molecular approaches, genomics, physiology and modeling. The group is also exploring environmental and evolutionary mechanisms that trigger the emergence of pathogenic variants among microbes.