My laboratory focuses on the study of bacterial-bacterial interaction in the human oral cavity. Specifically we focus primarily on interactions between healthy commensal or "good" bacteria, in order to understand ways in which they may help prevent or reverse the course of disease. We use a wide array of approaches including reductionist in vitro experimentation, in vitro mimic model development and microscopy based mutual proximity characterization of numerous interacting bacterial taxa. Our major work focuses on Haemophilus parainfluenzae which is a generalist species in the mouth yet also capable of causing extraoral infections. We also focus on the plaque specialist Corynebacterium matruchotii and investigate ways in which it might help facilitate the structure and composition of healthy plaque.