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Sheri Floge (1978 – Present) is an American microbiologist who furthers understanding of Earth’s biogeochemical processes through her study of marine cyanobacteria and their interactions with marine predators and heterotrophic bacteria. She was among the first generation of scientists to begin investigation of marine virus interactions within microbial communities and their role in ecosystem scale carbon cycling.

Early life

Floge was born in Long Island, NY in 1978.

Education

Floge graduated from high school and went on to attend the State University of New York at Stony Brooke. She received her bachelor’s cum laude in Biochemistry in 2000. She then proceeded to attend the University of Maine to receive her master’s degree in 2005 studying oceanography under the mentorship of Mark Wells. In 2008, she accepted a job as a research associate in marine microbial biochemistry at Cellana, LLC in Kailua Kona, Hawaii where she worked for 2 years. She then moved back to Maine, accepting a job at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, and returning to the University of Maine in 2010. She received her Ph.D. in Oceanography in 2014 under the advisership of William H. Wilson and Mary Jane Perry studying virus infections of eukaryotic microbes.

Career and Research

During her time as an undergraduate student at State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brooke, Floge participated in research on whole-cell immunolocalization of nitrogenase in marine diazotrophic cyanobacteria at the SUNY Stony Brook’s Marine Sciences Research Center. In 1998, She traveled to the Botanika Institutionen at the University of Stockholm in Sweden to research under Birgitta Bergman in collaboration with her research at State University of New York. Her work as an undergraduate researcher also included fieldwork at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Zanzibar, Tanzania and on R/V Roger Revelle in the South Pacific Ocean. These contributions led to her first co-authorship to be published in 1998 in the Applied and Environmental Microbiology Journal, followed by her second co-authorship published in 2002 in the Marine Ecology Progress Series. In 2000, she began working for a PenBay Research Collaborative, doing field research on lobster boats in the Gulf of Maine until 2002. She also participated in PIRANA/MANTRA South Atlantic Ocean project and with the NURP Gulf of Maine cruise in 2001.

As a master’s student at the University of Maine, Floge defended her thesis titled “Seasonal variation in colloidal chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) in the Damariscotta River Estuary”. In her first year, she participated in the EcoHAB project on the R/V Wecoma in the North Pacific Ocean studying the physiology, toxicology, ecology, and oceanography of toxic Pseudo-nitzschia species. She published two papers in the journal Limnology and Oceanography as a first author in 2007 and 2009 of her discoveries from her time as a master’s student.

As a research associate at Cellana, Floge researched algae-based bioproducts including EPA Omega-3 oils, ink feedstock, animal feed and biofuel feedstocks.

She went on to write her dissertation on virus infections of eukaryotic microbes at the University of Maine as a Ph.D. candidate. During this time, she contributed to 3 publications that are currently under review, as first author of a paper titled “Virus infection leads to rapid changes in the metabolic capacity of globally-distributed marine alga, Emiliania huxleyi”.

Following her graduation in 2014, she went on to obtain a postdoctoral research position at University of Arizona within the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary biology. She then relocated to The Ohio State University in June 2015 to continue postdoctoral research in the Department of Microbiology with the Sullivan Lab. She collaborated on 4 more publications   from 2016-2019.

Floge then accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Biology teaching and mentoring in her own lab at Wake Forest University in 2018. Her lab studies how microbes interact with one another and their environment, the chemical reactions that mediate these relationships, and the resulting impact on upper ocean carbon and nitrogen cycling. She focuses on how viruses alter cellular metabolism in the context of their ecosystem. Her lab combines fieldwork and laboratory experiments, utilizing imaging, biochemical, molecular, and computational biology analyses.

Outreach and Achievements

Floge is a member of the American Society for Microbiology, the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, and The Oceanography Society. She has extended her service into the community through a Biosphere 2 Ocean Discovery Night program, a Keller-BLOOM program, K-12 classroom visits, as a part of the ASLO Professional Ethics Committee, as an undergraduate and graduate student mentor, and as a peer reviewer for The ISME Journal.

She has presented her research at many large scientific gatherings including the Aquatic Sciences Meeting, the Ocean Sciences Meeting, the Gordon Research Conference, and the Aquatic Virus Workshop.

Floge has received the NSF-REU Fellowship in 1997, NSF-RARE Fellowship in 1998, and Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2015. At SUNY at Stony Brooke, she received the Undergraduate Recognition Award for Excellence in both 1999 and 2000, as well as the Sigma Xi Excellence in Research Award in 2000. Additionally, she was awarded the Gordon Research Conference Outstanding Early Career Scientist Presentation in 2012.

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