Anne W. Thompson, Ph.D.
Portland State University
Anne Thompson, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at Portland State University. Her lab, the “Bluewater Lab,” combines approaches in SCUBA, sea-going oceanography, molecular biology, modeling and classic microbiology to understand how the massive populations of microorganisms in the sea make a living. Her work advances microbial oceanography in areas of microbial interactions with predators and symbiotic hosts, trace metal chemistry, microbial physiology and single-cell gene expression.
Thompson received her Ph.D. from the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in biology oceanography, working with mentors Sallie (Penny) Chisholm, Ph.D., (MIT) and Mak Saito, Ph.D., (WHOI). She did post-doctoral training with Jonathan Zehr, Ph.D., (UC Santa Cruz), where she and colleagues discovered that a globally abundant nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium is symbiotic with a single-celled alga, in what is now recognized as a nitrogen-fixing organelle. Single cell analysis and flow cytometry were central to that discovery, which led Thompson to become a senior scientist at the Institute for Systems Biology (Seattle, Wash.), working with Nitin Baliga, Ph.D., and the Advanced Cytometry Group at BD Biosciences. In this position, Thompson developed innovative techniques in flow cytometry for diverse microbial systems.
In 2016, Thompson joined the biology faculty at Portland State University in order to continue pursuit of fundamental research in microbial oceanography and to work with a population of students who are severely underrepresented in geosciences and microbiology, including first-generation college students and students from minority backgrounds.
Thompson received her Ph.D. from the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in biology oceanography, working with mentors Sallie (Penny) Chisholm, Ph.D., (MIT) and Mak Saito, Ph.D., (WHOI). She did post-doctoral training with Jonathan Zehr, Ph.D., (UC Santa Cruz), where she and colleagues discovered that a globally abundant nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium is symbiotic with a single-celled alga, in what is now recognized as a nitrogen-fixing organelle. Single cell analysis and flow cytometry were central to that discovery, which led Thompson to become a senior scientist at the Institute for Systems Biology (Seattle, Wash.), working with Nitin Baliga, Ph.D., and the Advanced Cytometry Group at BD Biosciences. In this position, Thompson developed innovative techniques in flow cytometry for diverse microbial systems.
In 2016, Thompson joined the biology faculty at Portland State University in order to continue pursuit of fundamental research in microbial oceanography and to work with a population of students who are severely underrepresented in geosciences and microbiology, including first-generation college students and students from minority backgrounds.