Dr. Lisa Zeigler is a microbial and viral ecologist using laboratory, field-based, and computational approaches to investigate food web dynamics and virus-host interactions. She received her Ph.D. from University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UCSD-SIO) in 2011. Her research centers on microbial (algal and bacterial) and viral communities within highly productive marine ecosystems. These ecosystems range from surface waters driven by photosynthesis to deep-sea hydrothermal regions fueled by chemosynthesis. Her laboratory combines large environmental datasets with laboratory-based studies of emerging model systems from these regions to measure biodiversity, examine interactions within microbial food webs, and explore how changes in physical-chemical environments influence ocean biota. With expertise in global genomic analyses of marine microbes and viruses, as well as detailed investigations at the single-cell and single-virus level, her work often pushes technological boundaries. This requires the development of innovative methods for isolating single cells and viruses in both wild and laboratory settings. Recently, she and her team have expanded their fieldwork to include real-time sequencing and analysis using Oxford Nanopore technology, which the GASP team has successfully adapted for the Antarctica-based program.

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