Jennifer L. Macalady

Jennifer is a professor of of geroscience at Penn State. She is a microbiologist who studies biological interactions with earth materials—soil, water, atmospheric gases, and rocks. These interactions are encoded in microbial genomes that give us clues about the co-evolution of Earth and the biosphere in deep time. In the present, these interactions are of prime importance to human societies, with implications for greenhouse gas production and consumption, pollutant bioremediation, element cycling, energy production from coal and biomass, and water purification. Our tools are emerging techniques in molecular biology, bioinformatics, and geochemistry. We look at microbial diversity and activity through the lens of microbial ecology.