I am a research scientist at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, NH. My work explores the complexity of microbial interactions with each other and their abiotic environment to improve our understanding of complex phenomena such as carbon cycling, degradation of contaminants, and plant-microbe interactions. I combine laboratory experiments, field observations, and genomics to address questions such as: what factors drive microbial structure and function, which ecological processes govern the formation of microbial communities, how do microbes regulate bioremediation of contaminants, and how can we incorporate microbial data into environmental models to predict their ecological function across a landscape.