Academic Keynote
Trent Northen, Senior Scientist and Deputy Director Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division of Berkeley Lab
Bio: Dr. Trent Northen is Deputy Division Director and a Senior Scientist within the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division at Berkeley Lab, Adjunct Professor of Comparative Biochemistry at UC Berkeley, the Metabolomics Program Lead at the DOE Joint Genome Institute, Laboratory Research Manager for the multi-institutional m-CAFEs SFA program, Director of High Throughput Biochemistry at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, and Assistant Director of the RESTOR-C DOE Carbon Negative Earth Shot. Dr. Northen obtained his BS in Chemical Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara, his PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from Arizona State University and performed Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Scripps Research Institute. His work has been recognized by several awards including being elected as a AAAS Fellow, a DOE Early Career Award, the Berkeley Lab Director's Award for Exceptional Service Achievement, R&D100 awards, Berkeley Lab Biosciences Inventor of the Year awards, and a Presidential Award for Science and Engineering (PECASE).
Dr. Northen’s laboratory focuses on understanding the role of exogenous small molecule metabolites in mediating microbial interactions with other microbes and plant hosts and how these processes impact plant and soil health. A long-term goal of the Northen lab is to help harness plants and microbes to restore soils. Towards these goals the Northen lab has developed a range of metabolomic, cheminformatic, and bioinformatic capabilities for metabolite identification and analysis. Dr. Northen has also championed the development of fabricated ecosystems spanning scales and complexity.