Announcements

  • Spring 2021: I'm excited to announce that I'll be teaching a new course, Machine Learning for Geobiology, at ETH this spring!

  • December 2020: Had a lot of fun learning more about the Bedretto Lab and sharing our latest results on the "Biogeochemical survey of BULGG waters".

  • November 2020: Greatly enjoyed (virtually) visiting the ETH Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health and speaking about "How gut commensals can teach us about the emergence of microbial lineages".

  • November 2020: Greatly enjoyed my (virtual) visit to the Universität Bern Erdwissenschaftliches Kolloquium!

  • November 6, 2020: Greatly enjoyed my first Swiss Geoscience Meeting and speaking about how "Microbial Genomes Encode the History of a Changing Planet" in the plenary session!

  • October 29, 2020: It was my great pleasure to give my inaugural lecture at ETH today!

  • October 2020: Enjoyed meeting the members of the Boston University Biogeosciences Seminar!

  • September 2020: Enjoyed giving the plenary lecture, "Microbial genomes encode the history of a changing planet", for the Zurich Interaction Seminar

  • June 2020: The Geobiology Group welcomes 3 new PhD students! Welcome Andrew Acciardo (MSc Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, ETH Zürich/Universität Zürich), Paula Rodriguez (MSc Geobiology and Paleobiology, Ludwig Maximilians Universität München) and Astrid Stubbusch (MSc Systems Biology, Universität Heidelberg)!

  • June 2020: Enjoyed joining the Rutgers Annual ENIGMA Astrobiology Symposium and speaking about "Biogeodynamic Models for Deep Time".

  • April 2020: Lots of interesting discussions at the Virtual Cambridge - ETH Workshop on the Origin & Prevalence of Life. Thanks for the invitation to speak about "Habitability and the Limits of Life"!

  • January 2020: Greatly enjoyed visiting the ETH Computational Evolution Group!

  • January 2020: Greatly enjoyed the 2020 GRC Geobiology conference and presenting my talk on "Phylogenomic methods to study the co-evolution of life and Earth".

  • November 2019: Check out the P. copri themed cover art by Eleonora Nigro and Preview article "The Strange Case of Prevotella copri: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?" by Sandrine Claus in Cell Host & Microbe this month.

  • November 2019: Check out our new paper, "Distinct polysaccharide utilization profiles of human intestinal Prevotella copri isolates", in Cell Host & Microbe this month.

  • October 2019: Check out our new paper, "The Prevotella copri Complex Comprises Four Distinct Clades Underrepresented in Westernized Populations", in Cell Host & Microbe this month.

  • October 2019: Check out our chapter on the "Biogeography, Ecology, and Evolution of Deep Life" in the new book, Deep Carbon: Past to Present, out this month.

  • September 2019: I'm honored to have received one of Deep Carbon Observatory's Emerging Leader Awards, thanks DCO for the many years of exciting collaborations!

  • September 2019: Check out the NBC news coverage of our work on deep life!

  • September 2019: I'm excited to announce the start of the Geobiology Lab at ETH Zurich!

  • July 2019: Check out our new paper, "An Expanded Ribosomal Phylogeny of Cyanobacteria Supports a Deep Placement of PlastidsAn Expanded Ribosomal Phylogeny of Cyanobacteria Supports a Deep Placement of Plastids" , in Frontiers in Microbiology this month.

  • Mar 27, 2019: Come learn about "Microbial genomics as a tool for studying the evolution of our planet" at NYU Biology; Silver Center Room 1003.

  • March 2019: Check out our new paper, "New ecosystems in the deep subsurface follow the flow of water driven by geological activity", in Scientific Reports this month.

  • September 2018: Check out our new paper, "The biomass and biodiversity of the continental subsurface", in Nature Geoscience this month.

  • Aug 17, 2018: I'll be speaking in the subsurface microbiology session of ISME-17 at 11:45 am. Come learn about our latest work on ecological modeling in the subsurface!

  • Jun 2018: Check out our new paper, "South African crustal fracture fluids preserve paleometeoric water signatures for up to tens of millions of years", in Chemical Geology this month.

  • Jun 17-22, 2018: I'll be speaking at the Gordon Conference on Deep Carbon Science in the Context of Geologic Time on June 19. Come to learn more about "Connecting deep life and deep time through phylogenetics and ecological modeling"!

  • Jun 4, 2018: I'll be at the 4-D Workshop: Deep-time data driven discovery and the evolution of Earth in Washington D.C. Swing by my poster "The size and extent of the subsurface biosphere" to learn about our work in this area!

  • May 2018: Check out our new paper, "Fluctuations in populations of subsurface methane oxidizers in coordination with changes in electron acceptor availability", in FEMS Microbiology Ecology this month.

  • March 22-23: We'll be hosting the C-DEBI/CCB Workshop on Microbial Evolution in the Subsurface at the Flatiron Institute Mar. 22-23. Feel free to contact me for more information.

  • February 2018: Our latest global visualization of subsurface cell counts is now available. Check it out here!

  • January 2018: Check out our new paper, "Dating phototrophic microbial lineages with reticulate gene histories", in Geobiology this month.

  • October 5, 2017: I'll be talking about deep life and metagenomics at Stony Brook University's Geoscience Seminar @ 4pm.

  • September 2017: How do cell numbers vary with depth in the continental subsurface? Check out the latest global dataset here.

  • July 14, 2017: I'll be talking about Portuguese thermal springs and DNA sequence analysis at Técnico in Lisbon @2pm.

  • June 21, 2017: I'll be talking about "Data driven methods for geobiology" at the EPFL Environmental Engineering seminar.

  • June 7-8, 2017: Great discussions at the "Advancing genomic biology through novel method development" workshop hosted by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. Check out some of the talks and topics here.

  • May 11, 2017: I'll be giving a talk, "Dating phototrophic microbial lineages with reticulate gene histories", at the Biogeochemical Dating in Deep Time Workshop in UConn.

  • March 23-26, 2017: I'll be at the Deep Carbon Observatory's Annual Meeting and Deep Life Community Meeting. Visit my poster on subsurface biological models and/or check out my talk "The biomass and biodiversity of the terrestrial subsurface" to learn more about my research.

  • January 2017: Check out our new paper, "The relative abundances of resolved 12CH2D2 and 13CH3D and mechanisms controlling isotopic bond ordering in abiotic and biotic methane gases", in GCA

  • November 2016: Check out our new paper, "An oligotrophic deep-subsurface community dependent on syntrophy is dominated by sulfur-driven autotrophic denitrifiers", in PNAS

  • October 18, 2016: I'll be giving a talk, "Data driven methods for geobiology", at the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigation Annual Meeting in Monterey, CA

  • July 2016: I've moved --- I'm now at the Center for Data Analysis at the Simons Foundation in NYC!

  • May 2016: I'll be at the Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life Meeting in NYC. Check out our poster: "How did phototrophy evolve?"

  • May 16, 2016: My FPO "From Genes to Metagenomes: Exploring life underground" is on May 16 @ 3pm in Guyot 110. See you then!

  • May 2016: I'll be giving a talk, "Continental Subsurface Biogeography", at the Deep Carbon Observatory/Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations Origins and Movements Workshop in Los Angeles, CA.

  • March 2016: I'll be giving a talk, "What can genomics tell us about early Earth?", in the Princeton Environmental Geology and Geochemistry Seminar March 3 @ 12:30 pm (Guyot Hall 220).

  • February 2016: Check out our new paper "The case for a dynamical subsurface ecosystem" on BioArxiv!

  • December 2015: My summer field work sponsored by the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research in Astrobiology is featured in this year's Smilodon (Princeton's Geoscience Magazine). Read the article here.

  • October 2015: Check out our new paper "Variations in microbial carbon sources and cycling in the deep continental subsurface" in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta!

  • September 2015: Check out our new paper "A metagenomic window into carbon metabolism at 3km depth in Precambrian continental crust" in ISMEJ!

  • July 2015: I'm moving! This year I will be a visiting student in Greg Fournier's lab in MIT. You can find me at 54-1018 MIT.

  • June 2015: I've received the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research in Astrobiology and will be sampling Portuguese thermal springs for DNA analysis. Contact me if you would like to learn more!

  • May 2015: Check out my poster "How Similar are Subsurface Communities? Perspectives from South Africa" at the DCO Deep Life Meeting in Lisbon, Portugal!

  • January 2015: Curious about the Longyearbyen CO2 Lab? Check out our paper on the permeability of reservoir sandstones here.

  • December 2014: I will be giving a talk entitled "Is the rare biosphere real or a technical artifact? A case study involving a multi-year deep subsurface time series" at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA. Check it out December 16, 2014 @ 11:20 AM, Moscone West 2004.

  • December 2014: I will be giving a talk on subsurface microbial communities at the December Princeton Prokaryotes Meeting. Check it out December 5, 2014 @ 1:15 PM, Lewis Thomas Laboratory 118.

  • November 2014: Our paper comparing the microbial populations of South African thermal springs and subsurface fracture waters has been accepted in Frontiers in Extreme Microbiology! Check out the paper here.

  • October 2014: Check out our new paper in Frontiers in Extreme Microbiology on the phylogeography of functional genes in the subsurface.

  • September 2014: I have been awarded a Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations graduate fellowship for the 2014-2015 year!

  • August 2014: I will be at ISME 15 in Seoul, South Korea presenting "Carbon Cycling in the Deep Biosphere: A meta-omic perspective"

  • March 2014: I will be giving a talk at this month's HT-Seq meeting entitled "Deep Subsurface Metagenomics"

  • December 2013: I will be giving a talk entitled "Metagenomics, single cell genomics, and steady-state free energy flux provide insight into the biogeochemical cycling of deep, meteoric water" at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA

  • December 2013: I will be giving a talk at this month's Princeton Prokaryotes Meeting entitled "Microbial activity and diversity in the deep terrestrial subsurface"

  • August 2013: Back from another great field season in South Africa!