Soil Microbial Ecology and Biogeochemistry
I’m excited to announce that the JGI accepted our CSP 2016 proposal, “Contrasting metagenomes from soil amended with pyrogenic and fresh organic matter: Implications for carbon cycling.” We’ll be looking at 12 metagenomes associated with samples from the recent ISME paper, which I think could be very interesting. I really appreciate the JGI’s decision to support me, as an …
Congratulations to lab member Michael Braus, who was recently awarded a UW–Madison Student Research Travel Grant! He will be using it to travel to the Microbial Diversity training course at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole this summer.
[Update: position reopened; applications now due July 1. If you applied in the first round, we still have your information on file.] We are recruiting a lab technician / lab manager to join the lab this summer! The selected candidate will support soil ecology research in in our lab in the Department of Soil Science. They will …
The CALS team at UW–Madison did a mini-Q&A with me to introduce me to the college – it’s posted here.
Yesterday marked my first month as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Soil Science at UW–Madison! Coming from the fantasyland of a Californian postdoc, I quickly remembered my Canadian instincts, and that wearing three scarves and two pairs of pants was basic common sense in -24°C weather. Fortunately, it’s also beautiful here, the frozen lakes are great for skating (and …
*** Update: The paper has been accepted at ISME J! *** We’ve posted a pre-print version of our paper, Dynamics of microbial community composition and soil organic carbon mineralization in soil following addition of pyrogenic and fresh organic matter, at bioRxiv. The paper is currently under review at ISME J. I’m really pleased to have it submitted, since it …
We are recruiting 1-2 new graduate students (MS or PhD) to join our Soil Ecology lab starting as soon as January 2016. Students will work with Dr. Thea Whitman as an advisor to develop a project investigating soil microbial ecology and organic matter biogeochemistry in the context of climate change. Potential projects include: (1) Investigating the …
I am excited to announce that my three-source, dual-isotope partitioning approach has been published at Nature Communications! The paper describes a new technique to separate one pool (e.g., total soil CO2 emissions) into its three different sources (e.g., roots, soil organic carbon, and added plant litter), but still just using two stable isotopes (e.g., 12C/13C or 14N/15N). I’ll leave the details for …
I’m officially on the UW–Madison Soil Science website, listed as an Assistant Professor [http://soils.wisc.edu/people/faculty/thea-whitman/], thanks to soil extension outreach specialist Geoff! I’ll be posting a more detailed announcement soon, but I will be looking for an MS or PhD student to start as early as January, 2016, and likely a short-term technician position. If our interests overlap, …
I set myself the goal of writing at least three proposals this year before I officially take up my position at UW Madison next January. How exciting it would be to arrive with a full-fledged grant in-hand! However, I may have to settle for building up rejection karma. My pre-proposal for this year’s NSF DEB call …