Department of Biogeochemistry

Re­search in the Biogeo­chem­istry De­part­ment fo­cuses on mi­cro­bi­o­lo­gical and geo­chem­ical pro­cesses that con­trol bio­act­ive ele­ment cyc­ling in the mar­ine en­vir­on­ment. We em­ploy geo­chem­ical, mi­cro­bi­o­lo­gical, mod­el­ing, mo­lecu­lar and single-cell tech­niques to study the en­vir­on­mental reg­u­la­tion of these pro­cesses and their ef­fects on the global biogeo­chem­ical cycles. Our goal is to provide fun­da­mental in­sights into mi­cro­bial me­di­ated pro­cesses in the ocean that ul­ti­mately af­fect ocean chem­istry, bio­logy and cli­mate. The res­ults are a vi­tal in­put for mod­els that are used to pre­dict po­ten­tial fu­ture changes res­ult­ing from hu­man activ­it­ies.