Specialty

Environmental microbiology and geochemistry. Investigates drivers and relicts of microbial evolution, focusing on the metabolically diverse bacteria of low energy subsurface marine sediments.

Research Interests

Microbial physiology, ecology, evolution, and geochemical cycling. Emphasis on Arctic environments.

Bio

Much of my research has focused on microbial communities of Arctic marine and terrestrial environments. These projects have focused on sea ice, cryopegs, and hypersaline springs, the interactions between microbes therein, and their contributions to carbon cycling. Current projects are exploring microbial diversity and isotopic biosignatures, and microbial evolution in energy-limited marine sediments. This work employs laboratory based microbiology and culturing, molecular biology, geochemistry and stable isotope techniques to characterize the mechanisms underlying these interactions. I am very interested in exploring how Arctic microbial communities' compositions and metabolisms are responding to its warming.

In the picture above, I'm sampling sediment microbes from a hypersaline spring on Axel Heiberg Island.