New and Exciting Things in the Levine Lab

Naomi is at the University of Technology (UTS) Sydney working with collaborators Prof Justin Seymour and Dr. JB Raina! They’ve been getting into the lab to prepare for ISCA deployments in January (check out this article). They’ll be studying phycosphere dynamics under environmental stress.

Daniela is a new postdoc in the group who will be working on Trichodesmium – heterotroph interactions.

Making fun art when communicating our research to a general audience! Su represented MEB during the first BISC and BREWS event at USC talking about mathematical models and microbes.

Hagen is a new postdoc in the group who will be working on degradation rates of organic matter in the ocean.

This semester we visited the Angeles Mesa library branch with FISH – thank you, Catherine for hosting us through NeiSci! We had an awesome group of kids and parents and had fun learning about marine science 🙂

CONGRATULATIONS Suzana! If you want to check out this cool story about how phytoplankton respond to increasing temperatures check it out HERE.

Anna and collaborators in the Webb lab spent 5 days in the Sargasso Sea on a BATS cruise collecting samples of Trichodesmium colonies!

Naomi is starting her sabbatical in Zurich visiting Prof Roman Stocker and Prof Martin Ackermann at ETH Zurich! They will be running some microfluidic experiments studying how bacteria respond to rapid changes in environmental conditions.

CONGRATULATIONS Ryan! If you’ve wondered about how to define microbial metabolic guilds, check out his paper HERE!

CONGRATULATIONS Anna!

Trang’s paper on the microbial control on particulate carbon flux is out in Nature Communications! Check out this cool write-up in phys.org . Congratulations Trang!!

Meagan passed her quals!!! CONGRATULATIONS Meagan!

Suzana was awarded a competitive Simons Postdoctoral Fellowship! CONGRATULATIONS Suzana!

Lee Bardon has joined the lab as a new graduate student! Welcome Lee!!

Nate’s paper on trait evolution is out in Proceedings B! Congratulations Nate!

Emily’s paper on organic matter accumulation in the ocean is out in PNAS! Check out this awesome commentary on the paper 🙂 Congratulations Emily!

Ryan passed his quals!!! CONGRATULATIONS Ryan!

Ellie Lee and Anna Weiss have joined the lab as new graduate students! Welcome Ellie and Anna!!

Levine Lab doing our part to #FlattenTheCurve

Suzana Leles has joined the group as a new postdoc! She comes to us from Swansea University and Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK. Welcome Suzana!

Nate and Emily’s paper on marine microbial evolutionary strategies is out in PNAS! Also check out the USC press release 🙂 . Congratulations Nate and Emily!

Noele Norris has officially joined the group as a postdoc! She comes to us from MIT (via ETH). Welcome Noele!

Nate and Naomi traveled to Sydney to visit collaborators Martina Doblin and Sinead Collins and work on our collaborative project – a great start to 2020!

Erin’s paper on differential controls on DMSP production is out in New Phytologist! Congratulations Erin!

Emily’s paper on carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling by marine heterotrophs is out in Global Biogeochemical Cycles! Congratulations Emily!

We have a new dr in the Levine Lab!! Erin successfully defended her PhD and will be heading to WHOI for a postdoc in the Kujawinski lab. CONGRATULATIONS Erin – very proud of all you have accomplished. (She also completed her first marathon, pictured here with coach, Ironman competitor, and office-mate Zaiss)

Trang has joined the lab as our newest postdoc. She comes to us from OSU where she just finished her PhD in soil microbiology.

We were asked to pose for some University promotional photos 🙂 They wanted us holding books so I snuck in “Tracers of the Sea”

We are lucky to live and work in a phenomenally beautiful place! Pictures from this year’s super bloom.

A fantastic trip to Xiamen University for the 4th Xiamen Symposium on Marine Environmental Sciences!

Erin’s paper on differential DMSP production is out in Limnology and Oceanography! Congratulations Erin!

Elizabeth’s paper on variability at the SPOT site is out in Biogeoscience! Congratulations Elizabeth!

Emily was awarded a competitive Simons Postdoctoral Fellowship! CONGRATULATIONS Emily!

#FacultyFriday

Nathan and Naomi joined our collaborators Sinead Collins and Martina Doblin in Boston for the kick-off meeting of our new Moore Foundation grant!

We have been featured a couple of times in the USC Dornsife news:

From Whence We Came

High Schoolers Get Early Glimpse of a Career in Science

Levine Lab representing in Tuscany at the Marine Microbes GRC

Sara will be starting a new position at UNCW next month. We will miss you Sara!

Erin was awarded a Gerald Bakus Graduate Fellowship in Marine and Environmental Biology to support her dissertation research. Congratulations Erin!

Former Levine Lab member Anna Wright is currently at the Palmer LTER station in Antarctica!

Emily, Noele, and Naomi were in Boston this week for the Simons Collaboration on Theory of Microbial Ecosystems (THE-ME) kick-off meeting. It was a full couple of days full of exciting discussions!

Emily, seen here contemplating patterns in ecology :), has joined the lab. She comes to us from MIT and will be part of the Simons Collaboration on Theory of Microbial Ecosystems (THE-ME).

Erin has been working incredibly hard running the Young Researchers Program here at USC.  The summer culminated with a fantastic poster symposium. Congratulations Alexia and all the other YRPers!

Xiao has started as a postdoc at Princeton/GFDL. We will miss her!  Check out her new website.

We’ve been working hard to put together a new QBio undergraduate major here at USC. The first majors will be starting

Jeremy Smith (USC class 2017) created this cool animation to explain how climate models work. He also highlights some of the challenges we are working on in the lab.

It was a busy graduation week for the Levine Lab… CONGRATULATIONS Anna, Elizabeth, and Xiao!

Naomi was named a Simons Foundation Early Career Investigator in Marine Microbial Ecology and Evolution

Erin was awarded a 2017 WiSE Leadership Award for her all of her amazing work with the Young Researchers Program, for promoting leadership and development amoungst her peers, and establishing herself as a leader at USC.

Jeremy will be working on a new method for quantifying variability in DMSP production under environmental stress. Congratulations Jeremy!

New paper out in ISME J on Trichodesmium consortium (with some of our DMSP data)….

Elizabeth and Xiao successfully defended their dissertations this week. I’m incredibly proud of them and all of the work they put into this fantastic research — look for some exciting papers coming soon 🙂

Xiao’s ASLO abstract, Impact of fine-scale physics on phytoplankton community composition in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, was selected for an oral presentation

• Nathan’s dissertation work was published this week in PNAS. They demonstrated that Trichodesmium can fix a short-term plastic response to changes in CO2, potentially through genetic assimilation.
• Sara’s analysis published this week in GBC showed an increase in the abundance of the nitrogen fixer Trichodesmium near the British Isles over the past 50 years. This work was part of her dissertation research.

One of my students put together this awesome video from our class trip to the Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina Island – thanks Cameron Quon!

Naomi’s perspective on dissolved organic sulfur in the oceans was published in Science.

Erin is on a 30 day cruise on the R/V Investigator with our Australian collaborators. They will be looking at DMSP and DMS cycling around the Great Barrier Reef. They have already run into tons of Trichodesmium!

Xuening came to us from Imperial College in London and will be working on her PhD.

USC undergraduates Jeremy and Alex have started working in the lab and Ainsley has started working on an ecosystem modeling project. WELCOME!!!

Sara has joined the group as a postdoctoral scholar. She comes to us from John Hopkins where she got her PhD in Biological Oceanography with Prof. Gnanadesikan and Dr. del Castillo. Welcome Sara!

Anna was selected to participate in the WiSE Undergraduate Research Experience Program. Her research will be focused on drivers of DMSP production. Congratulations Anna!

Xiao’s work demonstrating the Enhancement of phytoplankton chlorophyll by submesoscale frontal dynamics in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre was published in GRL.

Erin wrote a blog post about her research: Science, cells, and the smell of the sea.   They also made this video.

Erin departed on the R/V Falkor from Hawaii to Tahiti. She will be studying DMSP dynamics as they transect across the equatorial Pacific.

Naomi’s research on how climate change will impact the Amazon forest was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Washington Post covered the research in the following article: This model gives us the best look yet at how Amazon forests will react to climate change. The research also appeared on Nature’s blog and picked up by Mongabay

Anna joined the lab in September and will be working with Erin on the impact of multi-stressors on DMS(P) cycling.

Erin’s paper based on her undergraduate research with Prof. Benitez-Nelson was published in Marine Chemistry. Congratulations Erin!

Xiao’s research from her masters thesis with Prof. Smith was published in Ocean Sciences Journal. Congratulations Xiao!

Connecting Microbes and Climate, by Richard Hoops
“A new research lab in the USC Dornsife Marine Environmental Biology program is investigating the impact of climate change on microbial communities in the open ocean as well as the impact of those microbial communities on global climate and marine ecosystem function….”

Xiao was awarded the highly competitive NESSF fellowship for her work on the “Impacts of Climate Change on Phytoplankton Productivity and Carbon Export in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre”

Erin was awarded the prestigeous 3 year NDSEG fellowship for her work on the “Impact of Climate Change Multi-Stressors on Dimethylsulfide (DMS) Production”

Superlative Scientists, by Susan Bell
“USC Dornsife welcomes two new assistant science professors whose research focuses on some of the greatest challenges facing the 21st century — climate change and the search for clean, renewable energy…”