On Monday, March 2, at 6pm, Dr. Jennifer Glass, Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences will meet over dinner with interested WST Learning Community and other students to discuss her education, career path, and research. She earned her Ph.D. Geological Sciences from Arizona State University, 2011 after receiving her B.Sc. Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, 2006 and her B.Sc. Oceanography, University of Washington, 2006.

Dr. Glass is the recipient of many awards, including the American Geophysical Union Thomas Hilker Early Career Award for Excellence in Biogeosciences, 2021 American Society of Microbiology Alice C. Evans Award for Advancement of Women, 2021 Scialog Fellow, Signatures of Life in the Universe Initiative, 2020 Georgia Tech Faces of Inclusive Excellence, 2020 Georgia Tech College of Sciences Immel Teaching Award, 2019 Faculty Champion Award in Green Infrastructure and Citizen Science, GT Serve-Learn-Sustain, 2019 Kavli Fellow, 2018 Georgia Tech Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Judith Curry Service Award, 2016 NASA Astrobiology Postdoctoral Fellow, California Institute of Technology, 2011-2013 PEO Scholar, Arizona State University, 2010-2011 NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Arizona State University, 2007-2010.

The Glass research group studies the microbes that made Earth habitable, and, more specifically, the microbial mechanisms underpinning cryptic transformations of methane and nitrous oxide in oxygen-free ecosystems. Why focus on the microbial world? The Earth has been constantly inhabited for four billion years. For three-quarters of that time, life was solely microbial. Ancient microbes produced the gases that warmed the planet to clement temperatures when the sun was faint, and that invented the molecular machines that drive biogeochemical cycles. The co-evolution of Earth and life is woven into the fabric of our research group, which examines the interplay between microbes and the greenhouses gases that control planetary temperature. Our research informs the microbial metabolisms that (i) made the early Earth habitable for life, (ii) make the deep subsurface habitable for life, (iii) serve as biosignatures for life on exoplanets, and (iv) play crucial roles in regulating atmospheric fluxes of greenhouse gases on our warming planet.

For more details, see https://eas.gatech.edu/people/glass-jennifer