• Congratulations are in order to Diana Ayala, Caitlin Hodges, and Mara Cloutier on successful defenses of their PhD dissertations!

Diana (Environmental Engineering and Biogeochemistry) is a Fulbright Scholar from Ecuador, and her dissertation is Omics-Enabled Evaluation of Microbial Communities in Acidic Environmental Systems.  Diana’s BGC co-advisors were Bill Burgos and Jenn Macalady.

Caitlin (Soil Science and Biogeochemistry) was co-advised by Jason Kaye and Susan Brantley. Her dissertation is Interactions between minerals, oxygen, and carbon dioxide in the critical zone. Caitlin will be starting at the University of Oklahoma in August as Assistant Professor of Critical Zone Geoscience in the College of Earth and Energy, School of Geosciences.

Mara (Soil Science and Biogeochemistry) is at the end of a USDA NIFA Predoctoral Fellowship which helped complete her dissertation, Toward understanding the impact of management practices on soil microbial nitrogen dynamics in agroecosystems. Mara’s BGC co-advisors were Mary Ann Bruns and Jay Regan

 

• Congratulations to Allison Franklin on her successful PhD defense! Allison is a PhD in Soil Science and Biogeochemistry and her dissertation “Analysis of environmental fate, transport and toxicological impacts of antibiotics  and antibiotic resistant bacteria in agroecosystems impacted by wastewater treatment plant effluent.”

 

• The 22nd annual Environmental Chemistry and Microbiology Student Symposium is quickly approaching and the deadline for abstract submission is February 21st. For more information or to register/submit an abstract see the following links: ECMSS 2019 registration and abstract submission

 

• Congratulations to Paulina Piotroswski on her successional PhD defense! Piotrowski earned a PhD in Chemistry and Biogeochemistry with this dissertation “Enhancing analytical methods towards the geochemical and biogeochemical fingerprinting of shale gas systems”. Piotroswski’s next stop is as a post-doctoral scholar at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Good luck Paulina!

 

• Mark your calendars for the 21st annual Environmental Chemistry and Microbiology Student Symposium! It will be held April 13-14th and co-chairs Mara Cloutier and Jenelle Fortunato have promised a great event! Click here for more information:   http://sites.psu.edu/saese/events

 

• PPEM 440, Environmental Microbiomes: Concepts and Analysis Tools will be a new class offered fall 2018 and will be instructed by Dr. Terry Bell, a new Biogeochemistry Faculty member in the PPEM department. Here is a brief description of the course outcomes: this course is intended for students with very little background in programming or bioinformatics, but with a strong understanding of microbiology, molecular biology, and/or ecology.
  At the conclusion of this course, students will be able to:
  1. Interpret microbiome terminology and figures.
  2. Understand and present a summary of a microbiome-based journal article.
  3. Analyze microbiome-based high-throughput sequencing data using freely available software.
  4. Apply microbiome analysis tools to unknown data.
  5. Express their interpretation of microbiome data in oral, written, and graphical contexts.