Research Interests:
Microbial ecology of the oceans
Thompson’s work illuminates the ecology of microorganisms in the Earth’s vast open oceans and how they contribute to energy and carbon flow on our planet. The team uses approaches in sea-going oceanography, molecular biology, microbiology, systems, and computational biology to understand these essential microbes. Thompson received her PhD from the MIT- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Biological Oceanography and has held positions at UC Santa Cruz, BD Biosciences, and the Institute for Systems Biology.