Duke Biologist Who Studies Microbial Food Webs, Climate Change Receives Early Career Award

Jean-Philippe Gibert is an assistant professor biology at 老牛影视.
Jean-Philippe Gibert is an assistant professor biology at 老牛影视.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke Assistant Professor of Biology  has been selected to receive an early career award for his work on tiny organisms that could have a big effect on carbon dioxide release worldwide.

Found in virtually all environments on Earth, single-celled organisms called protists 鈥渓ikely play an important role in the global carbon cycle that ultimately fuels climate change,鈥 Gibert says.

That鈥檚 because of what protists like to eat. They gobble up bacteria, which release carbon dioxide into the air when they respire, just like we do when we breathe out.

In a 2021 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Gibert鈥檚 team was able to show that a few simple measurements of these microbial predators can help predict future CO2 releases in warming ecosystems.

Now, Gibert and his team will be able to expand their work. The Early Career Investigator in Aquatic Microbial Ecology and Evolution Awards, given by the Simons Foundation, aim to 鈥渉elp launch the careers of outstanding investigators鈥 in these fields.  

Gibert is one of  to receive the award nationwide this year.

He will use the 3-year, $810,000 award to better understand how cross-kingdom interactions among protists, bacteria, fungi, and viruses will shift in response to warming.

Prior to joining Duke, Gibert was awarded a James S. McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellowship that he took to the University of California, Merced. He earned a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 2016.