Lillian Henderson

I am broadly interested in relationships between biogeochemical cycling, organic matter, and microbial communities in the ocean. During my PhD work at the University of Miami, I studied the chemical and isotopic composition of marine particulate organic matter and its relationship to environmental factors and microbial community composition. More specifically, my work focused on 1) using the carbon isotopic signature of the phytoplankton biomarker phytol to investigate variations in photosynthetic carbon isotopic fractionation in the modern ocean and 2) characterizing the biochemical content of organic particles to better understand the production and degradation of particulate organic matter. In the Santoro lab, I am working to culture marine nitrifiers—both ammonia-oxidizing archaea and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria—and investigate the chemical composition and lability of dissolved molecules released from their cells.