The Geobiology Course

I'm going to California to spend a glorious month studying micro organisms. New country, new scientific insights and what seems to have every chance of being a really fun course - not a bad way to spend the summer

The Geobiology course is given by University of Southern California Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. Most of the time we will be at Santa Catalina Island outside Los Angeles, but we will also have time for a field trip to Yellowstone National Park in Montana. We will be twenty students sharing what seems to be a pretty exiting time.

Geobiology deals with interactions between micro organisms and abiotic factors and their influence on the environment. Such interactions has shaped the earth. It's ecology, geology and evolutionary history all mashed together and seen with a microbial lense. As an archaea researcher, I will walk in the footprints of the founding fathers. Yellowstone national park is probably the premium archaea spotting site in the world. Apart from the hot springs I look forward to the opportunity to learn more about the vast clades of cold-living archaea.

The tenth of Juny, I land in Los Angeles and two days later we will head up to Montana. We will stay there for about a week and a half, before we go back down to California and to Cataline Island.

I will keep you posted.