E. Virginia Armbrust is a biological oceanographer, professor, and current director of the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

School of Oceanography. She is an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Science, an elected fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

, and an elected fellow of the

American Academy of Microbiology American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

Education

Armbrust obtained a bachelor's degree in

human biology Human biology is an interdisciplinary area of academic study that examines humans through the influences and interplay of many diverse fields such as genetics, evolution, physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, anthropology, ecology, nutrition, populat ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1980. She then proceeded to obtain a PhD in biological oceanography from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

and

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...

in 1990.

Research career

Following her doctorate, Armbrust began working as a postdoctoral researcher. She then became faculty at the University of Washington in 1996 and was elected director of the School of Oceanography in 2011. Armbrust's current research focuses on

phytoplankton Phytoplankton () are the autotrophic (self-feeding) components of the plankton community and a key part of ocean and freshwater Aquatic ecosystem, ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek language, Greek words (), meaning 'plant', and (), mea ...

and their interactions with

bacteria Bacteria (; : bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of Prokaryote, prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micr ...

. She is an investigator of the

Simons Foundation The Simons Foundation is an American private foundation established in 1994 by Marilyn and James Harris Simons, Jim Simons with offices in New York City. As one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States with assets of over $5 ...

in microbial oceanography. She led a project which assembled the

genome A genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding genes, other functional regions of the genome such as ...

for a type of marine

Euryarchaeota Methanobacteriota is a phylum in the domain Archaea. Taxonomy The phylum ''Methanobacteriota'' was introduced to prokaryotic nomenclature in 2023. It contains following classes: *Archaeoglobi Garrity & Holt (2002) *Halobacteria Grant ''et al ...

that could not be cultured in the lab. This involved sequencing the genomes of a mixtures of microorganisms from seawater, and assembling related sequence fragments into a complete genome for the marine Euryarchaeota specifically.

Selected publications

* Amin, S.A., L.R. Hmelo, H.M. van Tol, B.P. Durham, L.T. Carlson, K.R. Heal, R.L. Morales, C.T. Berthiaume, M.S. Parker, B. Djunaedi, A.E. Ingalls, M.R. Parsek, M.A. Moran, and E.V. Armbrust. Interaction and signaling between a cosmopolitan phytoplankton and associated bacteria. ''Nature,'' 522:98-101 (2015) * Hennon, G.M.M., J. Ashworth, R.D. Groussman, C. Berthiaume, R.L. Morales, N.S. Baliga, M.V. Orellana, and E.V. Armbrust. Diatom acclimation to elevated CO₂ via cAMP signaling and coordinated gene expression. ''

Nature Climate Change ''Nature Climate Change'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio covering all aspects of research on global warming, the current climate change, especially its effects. It was established in 2011 as the contin ...

'', 5:761-765 (2015)

Awards

* Rachel Carson Award Lecture,

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, Atmospheric science, atmospheric, Oceanography, ocean, Hydrology, hydrologic, Astronomy, space, and Planetary science, planetary scientists and enthusiasts that ...

(2016)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Armbrust, E. Virginia American oceanographers Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science University of Washington faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology