Nicole Matos-Vega 1st 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 the physiological and metabolic capacity of methanogenic archaea in different environments and is interested in discovering methanogenic archaea in coastal environments and their role in the global carbon cycle.
(Inter)National
Karthik Anantharaman, Univ. of Wisconsin Madison
Brett Baker, University of Texas at Austin
Jeremy Bougoure, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Robert Bowers, Joint Genome Institute
Virginia Edgcomb, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Mark Ellisman, University of California San Diego
Emiley Eloe-Fadrosh, Joint Genome Institute
Thijs Ettema, Wageningen University
Laura Pace & James Hemp
Mandy Joye, University of Georgia
Rex Malmstrom, Joint Genome Institute
Jeffrey Marlow, Boston University
Martin Pilhofer, ETH Zurich
Tom Santangelo, Colorado State University
Frederik Schultz, Joint Genome Institute
Andreas Teske, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tanja Woyke, Joint Genome Institute
Stavros Trimmer 3rd year grad student
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.
Former lab members
William Christian 6th year grad student
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
Joelie vanBeek 1st 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 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.
Sylvia Nupp 4th 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.
Roland Hatzenpichler, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Associate Director, Thermal Biology Institute
Affiliated Faculty with the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, the Center for Biofilm Engineering, and the 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 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 the User Executive Committee of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. He is an editorial board member of the journal Environmental Microbiology.
Download CV (updated July 2024)
email: rolandhatzenpichler (at) gmail.com ORCID profile GoogleScholar profile
environmicrobio.bsky.social
Postdoctoral scholar
Anthony McLean 2nd year grad student
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.
Dogtoral students
Anthony Kohtz Google Scholar Profile
Anthony earned his B.S. in microbiology and geology with a chemistry minor from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2017. In his PhD with our lab, Anthony studied the ecophysiology of uncultured microbes in geothermal features in order to establish the metabolic potential, substrate utilization, and biogeochemical roles of largely uncharacterized archaeal phyla, with a focus on novel methanogens within the Thermoproteota. Additionally, he works on the development of new Raman microspectroscopy based approaches for enhanced visualization and cell-sorting of environmental taxa. Anthony defended his PhD in July 2024 and now conducts a short postdoctoral stay with us before heading to conduct postdoctoral with Chris Greening starting 2025.
Graduate students
Collaborating labs
7 year old Australian Labradoodle. Controls that cookie availability doesn't get out of hand.
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.
Jacob Schimetz 2nd year grad student
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.
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.
Ashley Cohen, former postdoc, then associate editor at Nature Communications. Washington, DC
Viola Krukenberg, former postdoc, then postdoc at the University of Jena, Germany.
Mackenzie Lynes, former grad student. PhD 2023. Now Scientist at ARUP Laboratories, Salt Lake City, UT
Andrew Montgomery, former postdoctoral fellow.
Nicholas Reichart, former grad student, PhD 2021. Now postdoc with Aaron Wright, PNNL & Baylor University, TX
George Schaible, former grad student, PhD 2024. Now postdoc with Jean-Marie Volland at UC Santa Barbara, CA.
Rachel Spietz, former postdoc. Now senior microbiologist at Enviromin Inc., Bozeman, MT
@MSU
Erik Grumstrup, Chemistry and Biochemistry
William Inskeep, Environmental Sciences
Timothy McDermott, Environmental Sciences
Frank Stewart, Microbiology and Cell Biology
Qian Wang, Environmental Science
Stephan Warnat, Mechanical Engineering
Blake Wiedenheft, Microbiology and Cell Biology