With a background in ecology & evolutionary biology, Dr. Jay Lennon became interested in the microbial world from a desire to understand how small-scale microbial processes influence ecosystem phenomena, such as the flux of energy through food webs. Towards the end of his Ph.D. at Dartmouth College, he was introduced to tools and theory in the Microbial Diversity course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) before conducting his postdoc at Brown University. He studied host-phage coevolution and its effects on nutrient cycling. Following this, he was an assistant professor at Michigan State University while in residence at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, before moving to the Department of Biology at Indiana University, where his laboratory focuses on the ecological and evolutionary processes that generate and maintain biodiversity in a range of ecosystems.

His laboratory has been supported by the USDA, NASA, NSF and DoD. In the classroom, he teaches an undergraduate course in "Microbiomes: Environmental and Human Health" and a graduate-level course in "Quantitative Biodiversity," which emphasizes basic coding, reproducible science, data visualization and multivariate statistics.

In addition to being a Kavli Fellow, he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM). He currently serve as a governor for the AAM (2020-2023). 

Dr. Patrick Boyle is the Head of Codebase at Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston-based synthetic biology company that makes and sells engineered organisms. Ginkgo’s platform is enabling biotechnology applications across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals.

The Codebase team leads Ginkgo's customer facing programs and develops the company's "Codebase" portfolio of reusable biological assets. Ginkgo's Codebase includes thousands of novel strains, enzymes, genetic parts and diverse genetic repositories, including millions of engineered DNA sequences.

Patrick was a 2014 fellow in the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security's Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Program, and currently serves on the Board of Life Sciences for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Prior to Ginkgo, Boyle received his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School in 2012, developing synthetic biology applications in bacteria, yeast and plants in the lab of Dr. Pamela Silver. He received a B.S. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006.

Mary Ann Bruns, Ph.D. is Professor of Soil Microbiology in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Bruns teaches and conducts research in environmental microbiology and is on the Executive Committee of Penn State’s Microbiome Center. She received a B.A. in Microbiology and M.S. in Food Science & Technology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Ph.D. in Crop and Soil Sciences from Michigan State University, with graduate training in the Center for Microbial Ecology. Her research investigates how land use and management affect soil and root microbiomes and soil functionality for ecosystem service delivery. Bruns served twice as President of the Allegheny Branch of ASM. As an ASM International Fellow in 2009, she conducted a molecular microbiology teaching workshop at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, and received an ASM Outstanding Service Award from the International Board. Dr. Bruns has interest in innovative microbiology training for undergraduates across disciplines to promote broader technical employment opportunities.

Dr. Mallory Choudoir is an assistant professor and extension specialist in the North Carolina State University Plant and Microbial Biology Department. She earned her Ph.D. in microbiology from Cornell University and her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Choudoir's research interests include microbial ecology and evolution, soil microbiology, agroecosystems, microbes and climate change. The Choudoir lab focuses on the ecological and evolutionary processes driving plant-soil-microbe interactions in agroecosystems to inform decisions about land management, cropping systems and nutrient inputs to prioritize soil microbiome resilience and stability to maximize crop productivity. 

Dr. Rita Colwell is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland at College Park and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and president of CosmosID, Inc. Her interests are focused on global infectious diseases, water and health. She has authored or co-authored 20 books and more than 800 scientific publications.
 
Colwell served as 11th director of the National Science Foundation and co-chair of the Committee on Science, National Science and Technology Council.   
 
Colwell served as chair of Governors of the American Academy of Microbiology, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington Academy of Sciences, American Society for Microbiology, Sigma Xi National Science Honorary Society, International Union of Microbiological Societies and American Institute of Biological Sciences. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Royal Society of Canada, Royal Irish Academy, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Philosophical Society. 
 
Colwell has been awarded 63 honorary degrees from institutions of higher education and is the recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, bestowed by the Emperor of Japan, 2006 National Medal of Science awarded by the President of the United States, 2010 Stockholm Water Prize awarded by the King of Sweden, and the 2018 Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize of Singapore. A geological site in Antarctica, Colwell Massif, has been named in recognition of her work in the polar regions.

Dr. Eric A. Davidson is professor of the Appalachian Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, where he served as director for 6 years. His research includes terrestrial nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas emissions from soils, global biogeochemical cycles and sustainable agriculture.

Davidson is a past president and fellow of the American Geophysical Union, fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Web of Science highly cited researcher. He served as the North American Center Director for the International Nitrogen Initiative and as the NASA project scientist for the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia. He currently serves as senior editor for AGU Advances. He previously served as an editor for Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Global Change Biology, and Soil Science Society of America Journal.

Davidson received his Ph.D. from the North Carolina State University Department of Forestry and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and at the NASA Ames Research Center. He worked for 22 years at the Woods Hole Research Center, including a term as president and executive director. A new book entitled Science for a Green New Deal; Connecting Climate, Economics, and Social Justice was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2022. Davidson recently completed a Jefferson Science Fellowship, a program administered by the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, where he served as a science advisor to the Office of Environmental Quality at the U.S. Department of State.

Dr. Antar Jutla is an environmental engineering sciences associate professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in agricultural engineering from Punjab Agricultural University, India, a M.S. in civil and geological engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada and a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Tufts University, Mass.

The central theme of his research is to understand the role of humans in the hydrological cycle (i.e., the coupling between natural and human systems). Within this context, the bulk of Jutla's research has focused on quantifying the influence of weather, climatic and environmental processes on the abundance and presence of infectious pathogens, as well as predicting the risk of the outbreak of water- and air- borne diseases in the human population.

Jutla has developed a highly interdisciplinary platform, Geohealth and Hydrology Laboratory (GeoHLab), that specializes in the use of satellite remote sensing data to develop algorithms to identify complex spatio-temporal patterns to address issues of changing variability in climatic processes on the emergence of pathogenic niches. His research has been funded through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation (including a CAREER award), United States Department of Agriculture, United States Geological Survey, Environmental Protection Agency, United Kingdom Department for International Development and United States Department of Transportation. 

Dr. Margaret McFall-Ngai is the Biosphere Sciences and Engineering Division director at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Her research interests include the role of beneficial bacteria in health, the study of nested ecosystems of animals and their microbial partners, the mechanisms underlying the establishment and maintenance of persistent animal-bacterial interactions and the convergent evolution of the eyes and light organs of animals, from morphology and biochemistry to developmental and evolutionary mechanisms.

McFall-Ngai earned a Ph.D. in biology from UCLA in 1983. She received the National Research Service Award. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in protein biochemistry/biophysics at the Jules Stein Eye Institute, UCLA, from 1984 to 1986 and was a University of California President’s Fellow from 1987 to 1989.
  
McFall-Ngai is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology. She has received a NIH MERIT Award (2018-2028), a Doctor Honoris Causa from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, the EU Marie Curie Fellowship (2011-2016) and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2009-2010). She was selected as an AD White Professor-at-Large (2012-2018), University of Hawai'i 2002 Regent’s Medal for Excellence in Research, Albert S. Raubenheimer Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in 1994 from USC and the UCLA Graduate Woman of the Year Award in 1983.

Dr. Adriana L. Romero-Olivares is a soil microbiologist who works at the intersection of ecosystem ecology and evolution, with an emphasis on fungi. She is interested in understanding how fungi respond and adapt to environmental stress. Her overall research goal is to better understand and plan for ecosystem-scale effects of global climate change.

Romero-Olivares received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Irvine where she investigated the effects of global warming on the soil fungal communities of boreal forests in Alaska. She did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of New Hampshire where she was a Diversity & Innovation Scholar studying fungal traits and emission of volatile organic compounds in soils experiencing long-term simulated warming and nitrogen pollution at Harvard Forest. She is now an assistant professor at New Mexico State University. Her lab explores fungi in natural ecosystems, their traits and how they respond and adapt to global climate change.

Romero-Olivares' awards include the 2021 Excellence in Ecology from the Ecological Society of America, 2021 Interchange Ambassador Award from the Mycological Society of America, Mycological Society of America' s outstanding service as chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee in 2019, an Ecological Society of America Travel Award and Dynamic Womxn of UCI 2017 Academic Achievement Award.
 

Dr. Pamela Silver is the Adams Professor of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. She received her B.S. in chemistry and Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California. She has been recognized with an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association, a Research Scholar of the March of Dimes, a NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, Claudia Adams Barr Investigator, a NIH MERIT award, the Philosophical Society Lecture, a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is among the top global influencers in synthetic biology and her work was named 1 of the top 10 breakthroughs by the World Economic Forum.  

She serves on the board of the Internationally Genetics Engineering Machines (iGEM) Competition and is member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. She has led numerous projects for ARPA-E, iARPA and DARPA. She is the co-founder of several biotech companies including most recently KulaBio and CIRCE and serves on numerous public and private advisory boards. She is passionate about using biological solutions for health and sustainability and training the next generation of synthetic biologists.

James Tiedje, Ph.D., is the university distinguished professor emeritus of microbiology and molecular genetics and of plant, soil and microbial sciences at Michigan State University. He earned his B.S. from Iowa State University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

His laboratory focuses on understanding the ecology, physiology and biochemistry of microbial processes important in nature and of value to industry. Tiedje researches microbial ecology, studying interactions between microbes, their environments and plant and animal species. His work includes understanding biodegradation of environmental pollutants and the use of molecular methods to understand microbial community structure and function. Tiedje and colleagues discovered soil microbes that dechlorinate chlorine aromatic compounds that can help degrade toxic chemcials such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT).

Tiedje was president of the American Society for Microbiology and the International Society of Microbial Ecology (ISME). He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Academy of Microbiology, the Ecological Society of America, the Soil Science Society of America and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Tiedje is the former editor-in-chief of 3 ASM journals (Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Molecular Biology Reviews and mBio) and was the director of the Center for Microbial Ecology for 30 years. He was the recipient of the 2023 ASM Lifetime Achievement Award.