WILLIAM LOPES

How microbes change one another

Microbiologist · Postdoctoral Associate, MIT

William Lopes, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Associate, MIT

About

I am a microbiologist and a postdoctoral associate in Jeff Gore's lab at MIT. I study how the behavior of a microbial population changes when it grows alongside other species, connecting cellular physiology and microbial traits to competition and community structure.

I am on the 2026–27 faculty job market, applying for tenure-track positions in microbiology and related areas.

At MIT, I built a community of bacteria and fungi relevant to the human respiratory tract and found that it can settle into four alternative stable states, each dominated by a different species. Combining experiments with theoretical modeling, we showed that cooperative growth within species is a driver of this multistability.

For my Ph.D. with Marilene Vainstein at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, I studied the pathogenic yeast Cryptococcus. Using machine learning applied to scanning electron microscopy, I discovered new capsular morphotypes and showed how cell organization shapes biofilm architecture.

Key papers: Multistability (2024) · Capsular morphotypes (2020) · Biofilm architecture (2017)

I also share the microbial world through art: my electron micrographs have appeared on three journal covers, alongside a 2022 Science paper, and in the exhibition Beleza que Mata (Beauty that Kills).

Research

My lab will investigate how microbial physiology and cellular traits influence the interactions between species, from competitive outcomes to the way populations grow and organize in space. I am interested in three directions:

1. Growth-arrest dynamics in microbial competition.

2. The unexpected ecological roles of microbial traits.

3. Emergent spatial organization in multispecies communities.

Recent

2026 · Hanyi Li, a graduate student I mentored at MIT, presented our work on microbial communities under antibiotic stress at the APS Global Physics Summit.
2025 · Two collaborative papers on fungal pathogens: high-temperature growth limits of Cryptococcus deneoformans (Disease Models & Mechanisms) and an antifungal 8-hydroxyquinoline derivative (Applied Microbiology).
2024 · Review of multispecies fungal biofilms, co-first-authored by the two Ph.D. students I co-advise (Current Tropical Medicine Reports).
2024 · Invited seminars at the Emerging Pathogens Institute, University of Florida, and the Center for Biotechnology, UFRGS.
2024 · Profiled by CAPES: “Pesquisador estuda formação e estruturação de grupos microbianos” (19 June 2024).

Selected honors

2020 · 9th CNPq Science and Art Photography Award, National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Brazil, for “Beleza que Mata”, a scanning electron micrograph of Cryptococcus gattii.
2016–2019 · Five awards in Ciência por Imagens [Science Through Images], UFRGS Center for Microscopy and Microanalysis.
2011 · Asteroid (26671) Williamlopes, named in recognition of award-winning microbiology research at the 2010 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
2010 · Three awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and an International Prize at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists.

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