<p>Dear Everyone,</p>
<p>I’m an undergraduate student with extensive research experience in applied and environmental microbiology, mostly discovering and researching microorganisms that can degrade major pollutants in water, studying kinetics, creating reactor prototypes, etc. </p>
<p>Do you know of any graduate programs that have research groups or strength in this area? All I’m seeing in microbiology is related to microbes, health, and immunity. The only one I have seen that has strength in this area is Berkeley.</p>
<p>Any help?</p>
<p>Best.</p>
<p>Berkeheartely, I suspect that you’ve just been looking in the wrong places… In my experience, most applied and environmental microbiology research groups are actually in geoscience departments and civil/environmental engineering departments. Also, many of these people will call themselves geomicrobiologists, rather than applied or environmental microbiologists. To find specific research groups you might be interested in joining, you might want to take a look at who is writing articles in quality environmental microbiology journals such as Applied and Environmental Microbiology, or environmental sciences journals such as Environmental Science and Technology, and then see if they have research pages online. Finally, I don’t know where at Berkeley you’ve been looking, but Jill Banfield in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science is one of the foremost geomicrobiologists in the country (from what I understand, she does a lot with acid mine drainage and metagenomics). FYI, I will be starting a PhD program in environmental geochemistry in the fall (I might actually get into some bioremediation myself).</p>
<p>Thanks for your advice! I will definitely look at my periodicals and use those to research graduate programs. Can I ask where you are beginning your PhD program?</p>
<p>I’ve found two other places in Berkeley: Professor Coates’ Environmental Microbiology Lab (from the division of microbial biology) and Professor Alvarez-Cohen’s Lab group (environmental engineering). Both seem to be doing fantastic research in areas that I am interested in.</p>
<p>So, as I gather, there are at least three primary fields that deal with bioremediation: geomicrobiology, microbial biology, and environmental engineering. What would be your ranking from “fundamental research” to “applied research”? My research interests are primarily in applied research and the application of environmental biotechnology in water. But, I’m not fond of engineering at all. What do you think is the best path to go?</p>
<p>To answer your first question, I will be at Princeton in the department of Geosciences for my PhD.</p>
<p>Second, environmental engineering is definitely going to be the most applied field that you mentioned, whereas geomicrobiology and microbial biology usually involve more fundamental research. YMMV however, as in my experience all of these fields tend to overlap, so I think you have to look at each individual research group to see how applied/fundamental their work is. Also, I didn’t mention this before, but you might also run across the term microbial geochemistry which is approximately equivalent to geomicrobiology (what people call their research depends a lot of times on whether they received their training in a biology, geology, env. eng., etc. department. Furthermore, If you are looking at bioremediation you might also want to broaden your search to people who call themselves low temperature, aqueous, or environmental geochemists. Like I mentioned before, this is a highly interdisciplinary field, so I can’t really say straight out where the ideal research group for your interests will be, because each research group will be very different in terms of how much engineering/applied research/fundamental research is involved in their work (I had a very similar problem when I was looking for grad schools, since I was coming from a more fundamental-research-oriented geoscience program, and wanted to do something more applied, but not in an engineering department). Finally, one of the main ways I figured out where to apply was by asking a couple of my professors which people they thought were doing good research in the areas I was interested in, so you may want to try the same strategy. BTW, I’m just curious, what department are you in currently?</p>