Title: Visiting Fulbright Scholar
Affiliation: Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences
Location: DRI Reno
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Phone: 775.673.7612

Professional Interests and Major Areas of Research

1. Environmental Microbiology: Bacteria and Archaea domains
2. Polar Microbiology: psychrophile genetic diversity and adaptation
3. Antarctic ecosystems
4. Environmental Genomics
5. Psychrophiles as astrobiological models

Experience and Professional Activities

Ema has been researching environmental microbiology and molecular microbial ecology for the last 12 years. She has been working with bacterial and archaeal genetic diversity in water, soil, and sediment samples. Between 2004 and 2009, she developed her research at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, in projects linked to the Brazilian Antarctic Program. As a researcher, her skills include classical microbiology and genetic analysis for studying microbial community diversity and ecology, bioinformatics, and field work in terrestrial and aquatic environments in tropical and polar regions. She participated in four Brazilian Antarctic Expeditions to King George Island, Peninsula Antarctica, including summer and winter seasons, and was a group leader during the austral summer 2007/2008 and 2008/2009.

In August 2009, Ema entered the Ph.D. program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno, with a Fulbright/CAPES scholarship, and began her research with Dr. Alison E. Murray. At the Murray Lab, Ema is developing her research with environmental genomics surveys of microbial communities in antarctic sea water, specifically with Nitrosopumilus maritimus SCM1 population (research linked to the project IPY: Bacterioplankton Genomic Adaptations to Antarctic Winter), and analyzing the microbial ecosystem of Lake Vida, a frozen lake in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica (project: Geochemistry and Microbiology of the Extreme Aquatic Environment in Lake Vida, East Antarctica). From October 2010 to January 2011 she went to McMurdo Station and Dry Valleys in Antarctica, with Dr. Murray and other 9 members of Vida team, to collect samples from Lake Vida. She is also participating as a field collaborator in the project Astrobiology of Icy Worlds and went to Barrow, Alaska, in April 2010.