Simons Early Career Investigator in Aquatic Microbial Ecology and Evolution Awards – Request for Applications 2025

Microbes inhabit and sustain all habitats on Earth. In both marine and freshwater systems, microbes capture solar energy, catalyze biogeochemical transformations of important elements, produce and consume greenhouse gases, and provide the base of the food web.

The purpose of these awards was to help launch the careers of outstanding investigators in the fields of microbial ecology, microbial biogeochemistry and/or microbial evolution in marine or natural freshwater systems, who would advance our understanding through field work, experiments, modeling or theory. Investigators were required to be active in basic research addressing fundamental questions in these fields and focus a large fraction of their lab’s effort in one of these areas. Research focused on the microbiomes of animals or plants, symbioses of microbes with animals, coral biology, paleoceanography, geobiology or aquatic pollution was out of scope for this program.