Name: SciCafe: The Subway’s Invisible Microbiome
Start: 2026-02-04T19:00:00-05:00
Location: American Museum of Natural History

$SciCafe: The Subway\u2019s Invisible Microbiome$

SciCafe is 21+ and free with RSVP.
Drinks will be available for purchase, including soda, beer, wine, and a specialty cocktail.
To RSVP, visit: https://bit.ly/3NHy3hU
What’s living on the subway pole you grabbed this morning?
Please note: A previous version of this SciCafe was listed as SciCafe: NYC's Hidden Pollution Problem. This program is still about science in the subway, but the topic has changed as of January 21.
In this SciCafe, Alexander Lucaci, executive director of the MetaSUB Consortium and postdoctoral associate at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, explores the hidden microbiome of New York City’s subway system and how a local experiment grew into a global research effort, sampling 50–60 cities each year. What began in paternal panic after a child licked a subway pole has become a decade-long project mapping the microbes that shape urban life.
From surprising discoveries to serious public health questions, this talk looks beyond the gut microbiome to examine how urban microbes influence antibiotic resistance, emerging pathogens, and future therapies—and why understanding the environments we move through every day is essential to understanding human health.