Jennifer Bellanca Hughes Martiny | |
---|---|
Alma mater | University of California, San Diego Stanford University |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | University of California, Irvine Technical University of Denmark Stanford University |
Thesis | From populations to ecosystems studies on the distribution, importance, and loss of biodiversity (1999) |
Website | Martiny Lab |
Jennifer B. H. Martiny is an American ecologist who is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Her research considers microbial diversity in marine and terrestrial ecosystems. In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Martiny was an undergraduate studied at the University of California, San Diego. [1] [2] It was here that she first became interested in ecology. During a study abroad programme in Costa Rica, Martiny started working on tropical ecology. [1] After graduating with her bachelor's degree, Martiny studied the diversity of birds and butterflies with Gretchen Daily. [2] She joined Stanford University as a graduate student, where she was introduced to microbes. [3] Her doctoral research considered the distribution and loss of biodiversity. [4] Martiny stayed at Stanford as a postdoctoral fellow, where she started working on the microorganisms.
Martiny studies microbial ecosystems, both on earth and at sea. [1] She focusses on the mechanisms that regulate microbial diversity, and how this diversity impacts the function of ecosystems. In particular, Martiny studies ocean viruses. [1] She started her independent scientific career at Brown University, where she established her own laboratory in 2000. Here she studied the composition of bacterial assemblages and how this composition impacted the function of ecosystems. At Brown she developed new techniques to study bacterial communities in the field; including DNA sequencing. In particular, Martiny focussed on the bacterial diversity in salt marshes, and how these bacterial communities responded to changes in ecosystems. [5] The salt marshes evaluated by Martiny included coastal marshes, which act as filters between open water and the pollutants from fisheries and nearby societies. [5]
In 2006 Martiny moved to the University of California, Irvine (UCI). [1] Martiny serves as Director of the UCI Microbiome Initiative. She has investigated the impact of drought on the microbial diversity of soil. [6] By studying the soil found in Orange County parklands, Martiny showed that moisture deprivation can result in changes in the representation of bacteria and fungi. [6] The reasons for these changes in composition are unclear, and may be that microorganisms that are unfit of dry conditions might mutate. [6] To perform these experiments, Martiny and Kathleen Treseder devised a technique called microbial caging. In this approach, dead plant material is encapsulated with microbes in a nylon membrane and measurements are recorded at regular intervals. She was announced as a visiting professor at the Technical University of Denmark in 2020. [7]
Edward Francis DeLong, is a marine microbiologist and professor in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and is considered a pioneer in the field of metagenomics. He is best known for his discovery of the bacterial use of the rhodopsin protein in converting sunlight to biochemical energy in marine microbial communities.
Alexandra (Alex) Z. Worden is a microbial ecologist and genome scientist known for her expertise in the ecology and evolution of ocean microbes and their influence on global biogeochemical cycles.
Microbial biogeography is a subset of biogeography, a field that concerns the distribution of organisms across space and time. Although biogeography traditionally focused on plants and larger animals, recent studies have broadened this field to include distribution patterns of microorganisms. This extension of biogeography to smaller scales—known as "microbial biogeography"—is enabled by ongoing advances in genetic technologies.
Mary K. Firestone is a professor of soil microbiology in the Department of Environmental Studies, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Her laboratory's research focuses on the ecology of microbes in various soils, and their contribution to the carbon cycle and nitrogen cycle in particular.
Jessica Green is an American entrepreneur, engineer, and ecologist. She is CEO of Phylagen, Inc., a biotech startup developing tools to monitor the microbiology of air. Prior to Phylagen, she was a Professor of Biology at the University of Oregon and co-founding director of the Biology and Built Environment Center. Green’s two talks at the TED Conferences on the Microbiomes of the built environment have received over 1.7 million views.
James Ivor Prosser is a Professor in Environmental Microbiology in the Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Aberdeen.
Alison Murray is an American microbial ecologist and Antarctic researcher, best known for studying the diversity, ecology and biogeography of Antarctic marine plankton dynamics of the plankton over the annual cycle; and her work demonstrating the existence of microbial life within an ice-sealed Antarctic lake. She studies how microorganisms persist and function in extremely cold and harsh environments, including those that lack oxygen and biological sources of energy.
Victoria J. Orphan is a geobiologist at the California Institute of Technology who studies the interactions between marine microorganisms and their environment. As of 2020, she is the Chair for the Center of Environmental Microbial Interactions.
Gabriele Berg is a biologist, biotechnologist and university lecturer in Environmental and Ecological Technology at the Technical University of Graz. Her research emphasis is on the development of sustainable methods of plant vitalisation with Bioeffectors and molecular analysis of microbial processes in the soil, particularly in the Rhizosphere.
Kornelia Smalla is a chemist and biotechnologist at the Julius Kuehn Institute (JKI) in Braunschweig and a university lecturer in microbiology at the Technical University of Braunschweig.
Kathleen Kay Treseder is an American ecologist who specializes in the interplay between global climate change and fungal ecology. She also serves as a member of the Irvine City Council after being elected to the position in 2022. She is currently a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Ecological Society of America.
Mya Breitbart is an American biologist and professor of biological oceanography at the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science. She is best known for her contributions to the field of viral metagenomics. Popular Science recognized her because of her approach of not trying to sequence individual viruses or organisms but to sequence everything in a given ecosystem.
Allison K. Shaw is an American ecologist and professor at the University of Minnesota. She studies the factors that drive the movements of organisms.
Mary E. Lidstrom is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Washington. She also holds the Frank Jungers Chair of Engineering, in the Department of Chemical Engineering. She currently is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Bacteriology and FEMS Microbial Ecology.
Abigail A. Salyers was a microbiologist who pioneered the field of human microbiome research. Her work on the bacterial phylum Bacteroidetes and its ecology led to a better understanding of antibiotic resistance and mobile genetic elements. At a time where the prevailing paradigm was focused on E. coli as a model organism, Salyers emphasized the importance of investigating the breadth of microbial diversity. She was one of the first to conceptualize the human body as a microbial ecosystem. Over the course of her 40-year career, she was presented with numerous awards for teaching and research and an honorary degree from ETH Zurich, and served as president of the American Society for Microbiology.
Oladele "Dele" Abiola Ogunseitan is a Nigerian public health researcher who is the University of California Presidential Chair at the University of California, Irvine. His research considers how toxic pollutants impact human and environmental health. He is an elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Catalina Cuellar-Gempeler is a Colombian microbial ecologist and marine microbiologist, currently an Associate Professor at Cal Poly Humboldt. Her research focuses on understanding microbial metacommunity dynamics, eco-evolutionary dynamics, and ecosystem dynamics. Her research group, the CGlab uses host associated microbial communities as a model system to understand how processes of community assembly result in patterns of diversity and function. The lab's main emphasis is on the microbes used in digestion in the Californian and Eastern carnivorous pitcher plants. In March 2021, Cuellar-Gempeler was awarded an Early Career grant of $1 million by the National Science Foundation.
Travis E. Huxman is an American plant physiological ecologist.
Ashley L. Shade is the Director of Research at the Institute of Ecology and the Environment within Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Shade is an associate professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences. She is best known for her work in microbial ecology and plant-microbe interactions.
Jamie S. Foster is an American astrobiologist, microbiologist, and academic. She is a professor at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Science, and Genetics and Genomes Graduate Program at the University of Florida.
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(help)UCI Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series - Dr. Jennifer Martiny