Where are they now?

Dr. Ruth Ley

Dr. Aaron Diefendorf

Class of 1996
Department of Microbiome Science, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology

Ruth's awards include the NIH Director's New Innovator Award and a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. In 2015, she was named director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tubingen, Germany. The Ley Lab studies the microbiome of mammals and plants, its role in host health, and how the host can shape microbiome diversity.

Class of 2006
University of Cinncinnati

The Diefendorf Lab continues to make progress at the interdisciplinary intersections of plant ecology, geology, and climate. A recent publication shows that deeply buried paleosols have been found to be rich in carbon, adding a new dimension to our planet’s carbon cycle, and revealing the possibility that soil disruption could contribute to global climate change.

Dr. Jim Randerson

Class of 1998
U.C. Irvine

Jim Randerson’s lab has emerged as one of the premier carbon cycle modeling groups working at regional to global scales. An important research goal is to quantify how the contemporary global carbon cycle is changing and to assess the implication of this change for stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases levels and climate.
In 2017, Jim was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Michael Beman

Class of 2001
University of California, Merced

The Beman Lab studies marine biogeochemistry, especially nitrogen cycling. In a PNAS study of oceanic systems, Michael and colleagues demonstrated that microbial nitrification rates decreased in response to the decreases in ocean pH associated with ocean uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.