Mike Wilkins, PhD.

Associate Professor

Soil and Crop Sciences


Fields of Expertise

Chemistry, Environmental Toxicology, Microbiology

Areas of Interest

Microbial populations, Biogeochemical processes, Subsurface systems


Biography

Dr. Mike Wilkins obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester in the UK, working with Professor Jon Lloyd on microbial interactions with radionuclides in the environment. Recognizing the importance of new ‘omics’ tools in microbiology, he worked with Professor Jill Banfield at UC Berkeley for his postdoctoral research before moving to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA, where he worked as a staff scientist for 4 years. In 2013, Mike took an assistant professor position at Ohio State University in the School of Earth Sciences. He joined the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Colorado State University in August 2018. Mike’s research group is affiliated with the campus-wide Microbiome Initiative, and broadly focuses on understanding linkages and feedbacks between microbial populations and biogeochemical processes across a range of subsurface systems. Their work encompasses everything from physiological interrogations of microbial pure cultures to multi-omics investigations of microbial assemblages sampled from the field. They couple these microbial analyses to geochemical and hydrologic datasets to enable a more complete understanding of system biogeochemistry.