Carolina Alejandra Martinez Gutierrez

Biography

Carolina received a bachelor’s degree in marine biology from the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur (Mexico), a master’s degree in biotechnology from the Northwestern Center of Biological Research (Mexico), and a PhD in Biological Sciences from Virginia Tech, where she studied the evolutionary genomics of marine bacteria and archaea at different timescales. After graduate studies, she was awarded with a Simons Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Marine Microbial Ecology to continue her research on the evolution of marine microbes at North Carolina State University. She will join the Earth Science Department at UC Santa Barbara in July 2024. 

Research

Carolina is deeply interested in investigating the origins and evolution of the bacteria and archaea that have shaped and continue shaping our planet. Moreover, she is interested in investigating the role of past geological events on the origin and evolution of microbes, and vice versa. Carolina’s research involves 1) the development and application of computational strategies to analyze large genomic datasets that help us disentangle the evolutionary trends hidden in DNA sequences, 2) the recovery of genomes of novel bacterial and archaeal groups from diverse environments to study their current and past evolution, and 3) the cultivation of bacteria and archaea to understand their physiology.