Prior to becoming an assistant professor at Oregon State University, Tom was a postdoctoral research fellow at the J. David Gladston Institute for Cardiovascular Disease at UCSF. His current research focuses on understanding the abundant array of microorganisms that cover the human body (known as the human microbiome) and how they influence health. He specializes in the development and application of high-throughput computational and statistical tools that characterize the diversity and function of the human microbiome, with the aim of identifying novel disease mechanisms and diagnostics.