Research Expertise and Interest
genomics, geomicrobiology, biogeochemistry, carbon cycling, minerology
Research Description
Jill Banfield is Professor in the Departments of Earth and Planetary Science and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. She is the Director of the Innovative Genomics Institute Microbiology Program and also has an appointment in the geochemistry group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her primary research interests are in microbial communities, and environmental microbiology, microbial, viral and phage diversity, and evolution. Her research group studies how microorganisms shape, and are shaped by, their natural environments. Her research group primarily uses cultivation-independent approaches such as metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and community proteomics to understand how microbial consortia interact with and are shaped by their environments, with implications for climate change research, agriculture and human health.