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We had a beautiful day for an Annex potluck / firepit out at UW Madison’s scenic Picnic Point!

The Whitman lab is seeking an undergraduate researcher to assist in a DOE funded project investigating microbial cycling of carbon in post-fire systems. The student will be developing novel culturing techniques to isolate, characterize, and sequence pyrogenic organic matter degrading bacteria from fire affected soils. Desired Time Commitment: ~10 hours per week (2-3 credits in …

The UW–Madison Department of Soil Science is pleased to welcome David Montgomery, professor at U Washington, and author of Dirt: Erosion of Civilizations, The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health, and Growing a Revolution: Bringing our Soil back to Life. As part of my current professorship, we are bringing Dr. Montgomery …

Recruiting: Ph.D. student Project: Systems biology enabled research on the roles of microbial communities in carbon cycle processes – Determination of the roles of pyrophilous microbes in the breakdown and stabilization of pyrolyzed forms of soil organic matter Institution: University of Wisconsin–Madison (Dr. Thea Whitman) Collaborators: University of California-Berkeley (Dr. Matthew Traxler and Dr. Tom Bruns), and Joint …

We had a great full-team DOE project meeting in Berkeley last week, after the JGI user meeting. We discussed our results so far, got to know new members of the team, and planned some next steps. It’s awesome to be working on a team with such strong and complementary skill sets, and I’m really looking forward …

Ok, just kidding – of course I haven’t stopped worrying – but it’s been just over a year since I started here, and things are starting to feel like they are on track. The timeline here in Wisconsin looked something like this: Winter and spring 2016 – getting the lab set up, writing grants, recruiting students, ON …

***UPDATE: We have made offers on the UW–Madison positions and are no longer soliciting applications*** Recruiting: Three postdoctoral researchers and one Ph.D. student Project: Systems biology enabled research on the roles of microbial communities in carbon cycle processes – Determination of the roles of pyrophilous microbes in the breakdown and stabilization of pyrolyzed forms of …

I am humbled and honoured to have been selected by my department to be appointed to the O.N. Allen Professorship in Soil Microbiology. The five-year professorship began officially on July 1, and is in honour of Oscar N. Allen as a gift of his wife, Ethel K. Allen. The support from this professorship will allow me to ask some very …

Sampling has continued apace up in Wood Buffalo National Park this past week. We keep expanding the number of different ecosites we have visited, with the result being that I have now seen some very different types of plots. We’ve got to wait until all the data are in, of course, but it’s quite striking how …

I’m up in Wood Buffalo National Park for a few weeks with collaborators from the Canadian Forest Service and the University of Alberta. We are here looking at boreal forest fires as part of a study on the effect of return interval (how long there is between fires) on ecological communities. While the overarching project is …