Victoria J. Orphan, Ph.D.
James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science and Geobiology, Allen V. C. Davis and Lenabelle Davis Leadership Chair, Center for Environmental Microbial Interactions, Director, Center for Environmental Microbial Interactions, Professor of Geobiology, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of TechnologyVictoria J. Orphan’s website
PriME Project:
The activity and interactions within microbial communities — that is, bacteria, archaea, viruses and microeukaryotes — on organic particles in the ocean are a fundamental biological control on the fate of carbon and its burial at the seafloor. Our understanding of the ecological and environmental factors influencing these interdependent processes and their effects on particle degradation is still rudimentary. Using imaging methods which allow us to follow the conversion of carbon and nutrients (e.g. nitrogen, sulfur) over space and time by specific groups of particle-associated microorganisms and viruses, Victoria Orphan and her group will determine their network of metabolic interactions and the role of viral predation on the degradation of marine particles that have different structural compositions.
Bio:
Victoria J. Orphan is the James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science and Geobiology in the Divisions of Geological and Planetary Science and Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech. She received her B.A. in 1994 and Ph.D. in 2001 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the ecology, evolution and marine biology program. Prior to joining the faculty at Caltech in 2004, she was a National Research Council fellow at the NASA Ames research center.
Dr. Orphan’s geobiological research spans the interface between marine microbial ecology, geochemistry, and geology. Her lab develops and applies molecular methods, microscopy and single-cell isotopic approaches using secondary ion mass spectrometry to quantify the activities, interspecies interactions and geochemical transformations by environmental microorganisms (archaea, bacteria and viruses) in ocean ecosystems. This includes deep-sea methane and hydrothermal vents found deep within the Earth’s crust. Orphan is the director of Caltech’s Kerckhoff Marine laboratory and the Center for Environmental Microbial Interactions (CEMI). She is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and American Academy of Microbiology, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016.