Dan Knights, a 37-year-old assistant professor in the University of Minnesota’s computer science and engineering department, is garnering attention by combining two hot research fields—machine learning and medical inquiry—to look into how gut bacteria (the human microbiome) is connected to a range of diseases. His expertise as a computational microbiologist landed him a designation as a McKnight Land-Grant Professor last year. In 2017, Knights will be leading a project to understand the role of gut microbes in irritable bowel syndrome, with a $1 million grant from the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, a collaborative venture between the Mayo Clinic, U of M and the state of Minnesota.