Research
Seafloor microbes make up to a third of
Earth’s total living biomass, but we know very little about who is down there and what they are doing.
I use stable isotope techniques to quantify the activity of marine sediment microbes and set up experiments to determine what controls their activity
This helps us understand their role in global biogeochemical cycling, and how they control climate-warming greenhouse gas concentrations.
Current (and Past) Research Projects
Surface Scavengers.
Characterizing microbial anabolic activity in surface sediments off the coast of California, USA.
Ancient Sulfur.
Tracking microbial sulfur cycling in a 2.65 billion-year-old fossilized microbial mat. doi: 10.1111/gbi.12227
Fire and Famine.
Determining the controls on microbial activity in the deep hydrothermal subsurface of the Guaymas Basin, Mexico.
Improving nanoSIMS.
Quantifying the decrease in isotope enrichments due to sample preparation for nanoSIMS