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Atlanta, GA | Posted: October 24, 2012
Summary Sentence:
Most of us gaze in wonder at how clouds of all different shapes and sizes form and vaporize across the beautiful October Atlanta sky. Few of us think about bacteria playing a role in this process.
Full Summary:
Most of us gaze in wonder at how clouds of all different shapes and sizes form and vaporize across the beautiful October Atlanta sky. Few of us think about bacteria playing a role in this process. This is not the case for Natasha DeLeon-Rodriguez, a School of Biology graduate student in the lab of Kostas Konstantinidis (http://enve-omics.gatech.edu/).
Natasha DeLeon-Rodriguez
NASA DC8Most of us gaze in wonder at how clouds of all different shapes and sizes form and vaporize across the beautiful October Atlanta sky. Few of us think about bacteria playing a role in this process. This is not the case for Natasha DeLeon-Rodriguez, a School of Biology graduate student in the lab of Kostas Konstantinidis (http://enve-omics.gatech.edu/).
Natasha aims to understand how bacteria affect cloud formation – a proposal that has earned her a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NASA-NESSF). This competitive fellowship supports research at the intersection of microbiology, genomics and atmospheric science.
To accomplish her research, Natasha quantifies the number of bacterial cells collected from the mid-to-upper troposphere (five to six miles high in the atmosphere) onboard a NASA DC-3 aircraft. She is currently investigating the mechanism by which these bacterial cells serve as nuclei for cloud condensation and ice formation. The long-term goal of her project is to apply her discoveries to improve regional and global atmospheric models that are able to describe the cloud formation process.
This work is conducted in collaboration with the Nenes lab from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Bruce Anderson of NASA Langley Research Center.
