Category: News

Check out the great write-up about our new paper and NASA grant published today!

IUPUI Geology professor researches groundbreaking bacterial discovery

We were funded by NASA to study how natural populations viruses control photosynthetic sulfur bacteria. Research shows that bacteria in seawater or corals are strongly influenced by viruses. We think that the blooms of purple bacteria in anoxic lakes may also be influenced by viral communities. If correct, this would revolutionize our understanding of the conditions that promote or prevent microbial blooms. To date, most of the controls have thought to been sunlight and sulfide; however, viruses may be the hidden figures behind the persistence and activity of photosynthetic bacteria.

This project is with: Alice Bosco Santos (University of Lausanne), Cynthia Silveira (U Miami), Joe Werne (U Pittsburgh) and Molly O’Beirne (U Pittsburgh)

More about NASA Exobiology here

Bawi Sung and Nahum Gerezgher are both American Chemical Society Project SEED interns in our lab this summer. Bawi is studying Ordovician carbonates and Nahum is studying iron chemistry of a northern Indiana lake. Both are doing an awesome job.

Fotis did it again by winning a graduate research award from Sigma Xi.

Fotis was awarded a GSA summer research grant. Nice job!

Here I am demonstrating some hi-tech equipment for viewing the Great American Eclipse. The School of Science’s Eclipse Viewing Party was a lot of fun.

Check out more about the event here:  https://news.iu.edu/stories/2017/08/iupui/inside/28-eclipse.html

Mauricio will join our lab group as a visiting scholar from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil . He will to do geochemical analysis of Archean rock collected from Brazil.