Message from the Director:

In tribute to the late Dr. Katrina J. Edwards, who pioneered C-DEBI and the study of microbes that “rust the crust”, a special issue of twenty-two papers, Recent Advances in Geomicrobiology of the Ocean Crust, has been published in Frontiers in Microbiology. Editors Beth Orcutt, Jason Sylvan and Cara Santelli are just a few of the many in our community inspired by her achievements in the exploration of the deep biosphere.

And a round of hearty congratulations to our C-DEBIers at (or formerly at) the University of Delaware: Dr. Jen Biddle, Dr. Rosa Leon Zayas and Christopher Petrone. Jen Biddle and her co-investigators have been awarded a prestigious $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to explore how environmental factors may affect the genetics of microbes. Rosa Leon Zayas, a former C-DEBI postdoctoral fellow, begins her tenure track position at Willamette University in the Department of Biology this fall. And Chris Petrone’s C-DEBI education grant Project VIDEO, developed with Lisa Tossey, Jen Biddle and Rosa Leon Zayas, has won two national awards for audiovisual communications and electronic media. Congratulations to all of you and the C-DEBIers who contributed to the guest 15 Second Science spots!

Cheers,

Jan Amend
C-DEBI Director