Dianne Newman

Dianne Newman is a microbiologist investigating the role that bacteria have played in shaping the Earth and continue to play in modern biomedical contexts. With training in environmental engineering, Earth science, geobiology, and molecular genetics, Newman brings together techniques and perspectives from numerous fields to study the evolution of ancient microbes’ metabolic processes (i.e., ways of obtaining needed energy and nutrients) and their effects on the geochemistry of their environments. Dianne Newman received a B.A. (1993) from Stanford University and a Ph.D. (1997) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School (1998–2000) and member of the faculty at the California Institute of Technology from 2000 to 2007. She was the Wilson Professor of Geobiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2007 to 2010, prior to returning to Caltech, where she is currently the Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology in the Divisions of Biology and Biological Engineering and Geological and Planetary Sciences. Newman is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and her scientific articles have appeared in such journals as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Geobiology, Nature, and Science.