Biography

I am a soil- and ecosystem ecologist with interests in soil bacterial and fungal community ecology, microbial physiology and metabolism, as well as plant-microbe interactions. My background is in soil biogeochemistry with experience measuring trace gas fluxes in situ, soil and water geochemistry. I’ve been trained also in traditional microbiological methods, like isolation and cultivation of environmental microorganisms, and combine field measurements with laboratory-based metabolic and taxonomic characterization of bacteria and fungi to infer their role in the environment.

At Berkeley Lab, I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working under the supervision of Harry R. Beller at the Watershed Function 2.0 SFA at East River, CO. There, we seek to determine whether early snowmelt-timing decouples plant-microbial nitrogen cycle processes, with potential consequences for nitrogen export from montane watersheds in the Upper Colorado River basin.