Although many have already heard the news, I think it’s time to make an official announcement and fill in a few details. After five and a half very good years here at LSU, the lab is moving to the University of Southern California. Starting in January 2019, we’ll be joining the Marine and Environmental Biology section of the Department of Biological Sciences, in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. In addition to a strong emphasis on marine microbiology and biogeochemistry, MEB has close connections with the Geobiology faculty in the Department of Earth Sciences and the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI). As part of this transdisciplinary group, we will continue to investigate microbial functions and ecology in aquatic systems, and advance our emphasis on combining cultivation with ‘omics methodologies. Our high-througput culturing protocol will get some upgrades, and we’ll be adding Pacific Ocean prokaryotes to our culture collection. I’m personally very grateful to the support we’ve received here at LSU over the years, and I know I will remember our time in Baton Rouge fondly. We are also very excited to become part of the USC family and join the close collaborative atmosphere among the related micro, geo, chem, and physics faculty.
