Mercette Ohlwiler

Research

I’m the newest graduate student in the Valentine lab and still refining the scope of my project. I’ve been interested in microbiology for most of my life and during college started reading about hydrocarbon-degrading microbes, which led me here! I study water-in-oil emulsions, specifically the microbes living in water droplets trapped in oil, and am interested in how these microbial communities function and impact the overall composition of the oil. I currently plan on collecting natural emulsions including tarballs and sampling oil from terrestrial seeps, as well as making emulsions of my own both in the lab and using microfluidics chambers.