Simons Investigators Elected to American Academy of Microbiology

Simons Investigators in Aquatic Microbial Ecology Brett Baker and Alyson Santoro have been elected to the American Academy of Microbiology. The honor is “based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology.”

The American Academy of Microbiology is an honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology, one of the largest life science societies in the world. The academy provides microbiological expertise in the service of science and the public.

Baker is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Marine Science Institute. His research strives to fill in genomic gaps in the microbial tree of life through innovations in environmental omics. Santoro is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on tracking the activity of the microbes involved in nutrient cycling in the ocean, particularly the nitrogen cycle.