Dr. Patrick Ymele-Leki currently serves as interim-chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the College of Engineering and Architecture at Howard University, Washington DC. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Prior to joining Howard University, he held a joint postdoctoral position at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston, studying the regulation of Vibrio cholerae biofilms and developing a high-throughput screen for natural product inhibitors of the regulatory pathways of Vibrio cholerae. Since 2013, Dr. Ymele-Leki leads the Biofilm Engineering and Drug Discovery laboratory at Howard University. The lab uses multidisciplinary approaches to (i) characterize physiologically and industrially relevant biofilm models, (ii) develop screening assays for the identification of novel small molecules with antimicrobial activity, and (iii) identify new biological and chemical targets for the control of microbial biofilms. The long-term goals of its research program are to enhance our current antimicrobial arsenal and further our understanding of complex microbial communities.