Ariane L. Peralta, Ph.D., attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to earn a B.S. degree in biology and chemistry and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in ecology, evolution and conservation, with emphasis on agricultural and wetland microbial ecology. Peralta was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to study the consequence of long-term cropping diversity on soil microbial community structure and disease suppression in soils, while at the Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University and the Department of Biology at Indiana University.

Peralta is currently an associate professor of biology at East Carolina University. Current projects examine climate change effects on plant-microbe interactions and biogeochemical processes in urban, freshwater and coastal wetlands. As a National Science Foundation CAREER awardee, Peralta’s scholar-teacher approach increases student access to research opportunities focused on applying ecological principles to address critical environmental problems that require microbiome management. Peralta was a member and then chair of the ASM Microbe Program Committee's Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity Track. Peralta is also a member of the ASM Subcommittee on Minority Education, where she works to collaborate on current and new programming targeted to early career scholars.