Alyson Santoro

Alyson Santoro is a Assistant Professor at Horn Point Laboratory, part of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science where she began as a faculty member in 2011. She holds a B.A. in Ecology and Evolution from Dartmouth College (1999), and an M.S. and Ph.D in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University (2008). Dr. Santoro was awarded a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Postdoctoral Scholar fellowship.The Santoro laboratory studies marine microbes involved in nutrient cycling, especially of the element nitrogen. Nitrogen is the limiting nutrient for primary production and carbon fixation throughout most of ocean, so understanding its sources and sinks are essential to understanding nutrient flow in the sea. Her research group uses a combination of laboratory and field studies to understand the ecology of marine microbes and their contribution to global elemental cycles using a combination of molecular biology, cultivation, and stable isotope geochemistry.