MMEG: Molecular Microbial Ecology Group

Professor Hilary Lappin-Scott OBE

FEMS President & Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research and Strategic Development, Swansea University

Professor Hilary Lappin-Scott OBE graduated from the University of Warwick (BSc and PhD) and then held Post-doctoral Fellowships in the UK and Canada before her appointment as Lecturer in Microbiology at the University of Exeter in 1990. She was awarded a Personal Chair in Microbiology in 1999. Her research group works on unravelling the complexities within microbial biofilm communities and has resulted in the publication of over 200 scientific papers in Microbial Ecology and the successful training of 50 PhD students to completion, many of whom have senior academic or senior posts in multi-national businesses.

: https://fems-microbiology.org/
: @@lappinscott

Dr Laura Lehtovirta-Morley

Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow and Associate Professor, University of East Anglia

Laura Lehtovirta-Morley is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow and an Associate Professor. She has been at the University of East Anglia since 2017 and prior to starting her independent research group, she was a PhD student and a postdoc at the University of Aberdeen. Laura also spent some time working at the Oregon State University and the University of Alberta and her proudest career moment is getting her work into Brock’s Biology of Microorganisms.

Laura's group research the interplay between the environment, ecology, physiology and process rates of ammonia oxidation. They focus on the molecular and physiological mechanisms that underpin the adaptation of ammonia oxidisers to their environment. Using both cultivation-independent and cultivation-dependent approaches, much of her work focuses on the model organisms Nitrosocosmicus and Nitrosotalea, which are terrestrial ammonia oxidising archaea.

: https://www.lehtovirta-morleylab.com/
: @@ArchaeaLaura

Dr Özge Eyice-Broadbent

Senior Lecturer in Molecular Microbial Ecology, Queen Mary University of London

Özge's research interest has centred on the microbial ecology of natural and engineered ecosystems, which includes understanding the diversity, structure and function of microbial communities. She mainly works on anoxic sediments and wastewater treatment plants using advanced molecular techniques and traditional microbiology tools. 

Her team currently works on the microbial ecology of methane production via organosulfur compound degradation in anoxic sediments such as from estuaries and wetlands. They are working to uncover the magnitude of organosulfur-dependent methane production in these ecosystems and determine which microbes and metabolic pathways underlie this process in anoxic sediments. They are also interested in resource recovery such as methane and volatile organic compounds from anaerobic digesters treating industrial wastewaters through understanding the diversity, interactions and metabolism of anaerobic microorganisms, which will be a major step forward towards achieving the sustainable development goals. Recently, her group have started to study the plastic pollution and its effect on the microbial communities and their functions in natural aquatic ecosystems. 

: @@OzgeEyice

Dr Marcela Hernandez Garcia

Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow, University of East Anglia

Marcela's career has been dedicated to studying how microbial communities establish in soils perturbed either by human manipulation or natural disturbance, specifically methanogens in paddy rice soils, carbon monoxide oxidisers in volcanic soils and antimicrobial resistance in agricultural soils. She uses high-throughput sequencing and stable-isotope probing to assess community diversity and function.

Her current research at UEA involves the isolation of metagenome-assembled genomes from natural gas seeps and their characterisation as players in biogeochemical cycles of the components of natural gases such as propane, methane and ethane. In her group, she investigates the importance of microbes in the early establishment of volcanic soils and their impact on the establishment of moss and specifically characterise CO-oxidising microbes, including the Ktedonobacterales. The diversity and ecophysiology of this functional group in the environment are poorly documented and impair our ability to quantify the biological sink for CO and the contribution of microbes to mitigate the atmospheric burden of CO in response to global change. Marcela is also Chief Editor of Letters in Applied Microbiology, a journal dedicated to supporting and developing the next generation of microbiologists.

: @@MateHG