Microbial Summer Programs

Hosted by Penn State University, the IGC features immersive training in geobiology based on field experiences in central Italy and at Green Lake, NY. Students will be instructed by and get to know leading scholars, and will gain hands-on experience using world-class geochemistry, biology, and materials research facilities on the Penn State campus.

Students will explore cave-forming microbial ecosystems, biosignatures in modern and ancient thermal springs, anaerobic phototrophy, how biology shapes carbonate sedimentation and marine platforms, and biogeochemical responses to catastrophic impacts and climate upheavals. Student will  gain experience with state-of-the-art metagenomic methods, isotopic analyses, lipid and pigment biomarkers, imaging spectroscopy, microscopy, field methods, and computational and data analytical methods.

Established in 1971 by Holger Jannasch, the Microbial Diversity summer course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA) has provided advanced training for generations of early career researchers in microbiology. The goal of the course is to teach professors, postdocs and advanced graduate students how to discover, cultivate, and isolate diverse microorganisms catalyzing a breadth of chemical transformations, as well as how to perform molecular and computational analyses relevant to their study.