Jacob Schimetz 3rd year grad student GoogleScholar
Jacob earned his B.A. in Biology and Political Science from St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN) in 2021. Following graduation, he was an IRTA Postbaccalaureate Fellow at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, where he conducted research in preclinical drug development and GI toxicology. He started his Ph.D. in Microbiology in Fall 2023 and will be studying the human microbiome in the lab. In 2025, he received a TL1 training award by the Institute of Translational Health Sciences.
If you are a prospective graduate student, postdoc candidate, or undergraduate interested in joining our lab, please contact Roland by email. Prospective grad students could join the lab via the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, or the Molecular Biosciences Program. Before applying, please contact Roland to find out about research opportunities.
Graduate students
Dogtoral students
Collaborator labs
(Inter)National
Brett Baker, University of Texas at Austin; collaboration on Asgard archaea
Jeremy Bougoure, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; collaboration on SIP-NanoSIMS
Virginia Edgcomb, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; collaboration on deep sea microbiology and MMB
Mark Ellisman, University of California San Diego; collaboration on serial block face electron microscopy imaging
Emiley Eloe-Fadrosh, Joint Genome Institute; collaboration on metagenomics and metatranscriptomics
Laura Pace, Stanford Medical School; collaboration on human GI tract microbiology
Samantha Joye, University of Georgia; collaboration on deep sea microbiology and anaerobic oxidation of methane
Trent Northen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; collaboration on metabolomics of methanogens
Martin Pilhofer, ETH Zurich; collaboration on cryoET of Asgard archaea and methanogens
Tom Santangelo, Colorado State University; collaboration on Asgard archaea chromatin
Florian Wollweber, European Molecular Biology Laboratory; collaboration on cryoET of Asgard archaea
Kelly Wrighton, Colorado State University; collaboration on methanogens from wetlands
@MSU
Erik Grumstrup, Chemistry and Biochemistry; collaboration on Raman-based cell sorting
William Inskeep, Environmental Sciences; collaboration on (hyper)thermophilic archaea
Timothy McDermott, Environmental Sciences; collaboration on bacterial methane synthesis and methanogens
Heidi Smith, Center for Biofilm Engineering; collaboration on; collaboration on Raman and live microscopy
Stephan Warnat, Mechanical Engineering; collaboration on; collaboration on Raman-based cell sorting
William Christian 6th year grad student GoogleScholar
Will earned his BS in biochemistry and molecular biology from Michigan Technological University in December of 2018. During this time, his research focused on understanding the diversity of an alkane-oxidizing gene in the microbial communities of the Great Lakes. Will is interested in answering astrobiological questions and, since the Fall of 2019, has been pursuing a PhD through the molecular biosciences program. His current research hopes to uncover the mechanisms behind the production of methane in oxic regions of freshwater lakes, known as the “methane paradox”, and to understand how impactful this phenomenon is on a global scale.
Research scientist
Zackary Jay, PhD Researchgate profile GoogleScholar profile
Zack earned his Ph.D. in Ecology & Environmental Sciences at MSU in the lab of William Inskeep where he researched microbial community structure and function in Yellowstone hot springs. He then did a postdoc with Ross Carlson (MSU) designing and building in silico, genome-scale stoichiometric metabolic models. Afterwards, he did a postdoc in the lab of Connie Chang (MSU) developing droplet microfluidic technology to understand influenza evolution at a single cell level. Prior to coming to MSU as a database expert for the NSF-funded Yellowstone Research Coordination Network, Zack earned his Masters in Biology from Northern Arizona University (NAU) in Flagstaff, AZ. There, he characterized genetic elements used to distinguish between highly-related strains of the causative agent of anthrax. He earned his B.S. in Microbiology Health Preprofessional with honors and a minor in Chemistry at NAU.
9 year old Australian Labradoodle. Makes sure that cookie availability doesn't get out of hand.
Sofia Pittortou Undergraduate research scholar
Sofia is a biochemistry undergraduate at Cardiff University (Wales). She is currently completing a year of research before returning to her final year of study. While at MSU, Sofia worked primarily with Stavros, optimizing Asgard cultivation and investigating the physiology of Bathyarchaea and potential strategies for their isolation. She now works remotely from Cardiff on the physiology of Bathyarchaea.
Stavros Trimmer 4th year grad student GoogleScholar
Stavros earned his B.S. in biochemistry from Colorado State University in 2022. As an undergraduate, he studied transcription regulation in the hyperthermophilic archaeon Thermococcus kodakarensis. In fall 2022, he began his Ph.D. at MSU through the Molecular Bioscience program. His research focuses on investigating the metabolic potential of Asgard archaea using both bioinformatic and culture-independent approaches. Asgard archaea are currently the closest relative to eukaryotes and encode a variety of eukaryotic-like proteins in their genome. Understanding their physiology will answer essential questions regarding how early pre-eukaryotic life might have evolved.
Nicole Nellyanne Matos Vega 2nd year grad student
Nicole earned her B.S in Industrial Microbiology from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez in 2023. During this time, she invested her time in interdisciplinary research and projects such as the NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) Competition in which she participated for three years. She also delved in space biology research by increasing the capsaicin levels in chimayo chili peppers grown in a simulated regolith bed using a 3D printed version of the PONDS system and in Interior Air Quality monitoring assessing fungi with pathogenic capacity. She started her PhD in Biochemistry in Fall 2024 and is currently culturing methanogens to study their physiological and metabolic capacity in different environments and is interested in discovering methanogenic archaea in coastal environments and their role in the global carbon cycle. In 2025 Nicole received a NSF GRFP (2026-2029).
Former lab members
Anthony McLean 3rd year grad student GoogleScholar
Anthony graduated with a B.A. in biology from Grinnell College in 2017. After graduation, he worked as a research assistant for Dr. Jessica Mark Welch at the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Forsyth Institute studying the spatial ecology of the human oral microbiome. He started a Ph.D. in Microbiology in the Fall of 2023. His current research focuses on the physiology of members of the human gut microbiome.
Ashley Cohen, former postdoc. Now US Naval Research Laboratory, USA.
Anthony Kohtz, former grad student, PhD 2024. Now postdoc with Chris Greening at Monash University, Australia.
Viola Krukenberg, former postdoc, then postdoc at the University of Jena, Germany. Current status unknown.
Mackenzie Lynes, former grad student. PhD 2023. Now Scientist at ARUP Laboratories, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Andrew Montgomery, former postdoctoral fellow. Now Field Application Specialist, Biocare, Pacheco, CA, USA.
Nicholas Reichart, former grad student, PhD 2021. Now staff scientist at Pacific Northwest National Lab, Richland, WA, USA
George Schaible, former grad student, PhD 2024. Now postdoc with Jean-Marie Volland at UC Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
Rachel Spietz, former postdoc. Now senior microbiologist at Enviromin Inc. and assistant research professor at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA
Joelie Van Beek 2nd year grad student
Joelie graduated with a B.S. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2023. She started her PhD in Microbiology in 2024 and is studying the distribution and physiology of methanogenic archaea in situ across various environments, with a focus on metabolic mechanisms. She is interested in determining how microbial communities change between habitats and what these changes mean for the ecosystems of study. Joelie is a NSF NRT trainee (2024-2026). In 2025 she received an NSF ERFP award (2026-2029).
Megan Gonos 1st year grad student
Megan earned her B.S. in environmental molecular science from The Ohio State University in 2024. Following graduation, she studied heavy metal uptake in phytoplankton and nitrogen isotope cycling as a research assistant at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She started her Ph.D. through the Molecular Biosciences Program in the fall of 2025 and is interested in microbial metabolisms and the origins of multicellularity.
Roland Hatzenpichler, PhD (hear my name)
Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Director, Thermal Biology Institute
Affiliated Faculty, Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, Center for Biofilm Engineering, and Montana Nanotechnology Facility.
A first generation college student, Roland earned his M.Sc. (2006) and Ph.D. (2011) in microbial ecology in the lab of Michael Wagner at the University of Vienna (Austria). From 2011-2016, he was a postdoc with Victoria Orphan at Caltech. In Nov. 2016 he joined MSU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry as Assistant Professor. He received tenure in May 2023. Since July 2025 Roland is the Director of MSU's Thermal Biology Institute. Since 2017, Roland has raised $6.3M in funding for his lab from NASA, NIH, DOE, NSF, and the Simons and Betty Moore Foundations, and helped to raise $18.5M in total. In 2017, he was named a NASA Early Career Fellow. He is a member of the Steering Committee of NASA's Network for Life Detection (NFold), and is a member of the editorial boards of the The ISME Journal and Environmental Microbiology.
In his free time, Roland spends time with his family and plays board games (h-index of 10).
Download CV (updated Dec 2025)
email: rolandhatzenpichler (at) gmail.com ORCID profile GoogleScholar profile
environmicrobio.bsky.social
Cheyenne Darrow 3rd year grad student
Cheyenne earned her B.S. in Microbiology from the University of California, Riverside in 2023. Her undergraduate research at UCR focused on how the bumble bee gut microbiome is affected by the introduction of synergistic stressors. She also participated in a summer REU program at MSU in 2022, where she studied how microbiome-based pathogen resistance in corals changed across diel cycles in Frank Stewart’s marine microbiology lab. She began her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Cell Biology at MSU in fall 2023. Her doctoral research focuses on environmental microbial community profiling and assessing microbial activity using techniques such as NanoSIMS and BONCAT-FACS. Cheyenne was an Extreme Biofilms NSF-NRT Trainee from 2023- 2025 and she was awarded the NSF-GRFP in 2023 (2023- 2028).
Sylvia Nupp 5th year grad student
Sylvia earned her B.S. in biology and chemistry from the University of Arkansas in 2021. She started her Ph.D. in biochemistry at MSU in Fall 2021 and is currently studying how microbial community activity varies across geochemical regimes in Guaymas Basin and Pescadero Basin, and the rates and patterns of anaerobic oxidation of methane by microbes in these systems.
Visiting scholars