Timothy K. Lu G is a prize-winning killer.

To be more precise, on Wednesday, he won the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Inventiveness for developing methods to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The prize will support research that aims to contain one of the deadliest threats known to biologists.

“I’m very honored,” said Lu at the awards ceremony Wednesday. “I’ve been working in the lab for three or four years doing my Ph.D., it’s nice to be recognized,” he said.

Lu described two major sources of infections that his research fights: hard-to-kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and biofilms, bacteria sticking to surfaces.

MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is one example of such a “superbug” which in 2005 killed nearly 19,000 people in the United States, surpassing the death toll due to AIDS in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lu’s research modifies bacteriophages, viruses that attack bacteria, to make them deadly to biofilms. The bacteriophages weaken the defense mechanisms of biofilms, making the biofilms susceptible to antibiotics which ordinarily could not destroy them.