Andrew Babbin

Cecil & Ida Green Career Development Associate Professor
Associate Professor of Chemical Oceanography and Marine Microbiology

bablab.mit.edu

My Research Concentrations:

I Teach In:

Contact Info:

Email

babbin@mit.edu

Office Phone

617.253.2181

Office

54-1812

Assistants:

Administrative

Wahida Abed 617.253.5935

Finance

Erin Chin 617.253.5728

Marine biogeochemist studying the interactions of microbial communities with their chemical environment to understand climate.

Research Interests

The Bablab studies how microbes (bacteria!) shape Earth’s climate by controlling greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We do this by sailing across the planet, performing high precision experiments in our Cambridge laboratory, and contextualizing our observations with numerical models and theory. Our ultimate aim is to reveal the mechanisms behind how the oceans regulate global climate. From this knowledge, we hope to enable society to make better predictions and adopt new practices in face of a changing planet.

Topics I investigate:

Ocean biogeochemistry
Nitrogen cycling
Carbon sequestration
Greenhouse gas production
Anaerobic microorganisms

Biographic Sketch

Andrew Babbin joined the EAPS faculty in 2017. After earning a bachelor’s in Earth and environmental engineering, with a minor in applied mathematics, from Columbia University in 2008, Babbin went on to complete doctoral studies in geoscience at Princeton University in 2014. Prior to joining the EAPS faculty, Babbin came to MIT as an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2014-2016.

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Key Awards & Honors

2022 • National Science Foundation CAREER award
2021 • Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Professor
2019 • Simons Foundation Early Career Investigator
2019 • MIT First Year Advisor Rookie of the Year
2018 • MIT Sea Grant Doherty Professor

Key Publications

Benedict Borer, Irene H Zhang, Amy E Baker, George A O’Toole, Andrew R Babbin, Porous marine snow differentially benefits chemotactic, motile, and nonmotile bacteria, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 2, February 2023, pgac311, 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac311
Babbin, A.R., Boles, E.L., Mühle, J. et al. On the natural spatio-temporal heterogeneity of South Pacific nitrous oxide. Nat Commun 11, 3672 (2020). 10.1038/s41467-020-17509-6
Ciccarese, D., Tantawi, O., Zhang, I.H. et al. Microscale dynamics promote segregated denitrification in diatom aggregates sinking slowly in bulk oxygenated seawater. Commun Earth Environ 4, 275 (2023). 10.1038/s43247-023-00935-x

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