Kay Bidle

Kay is a Professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences within the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University. He is a microbial oceanographer broadly defined. His research program focuses on microbial ecophysiology (especially eukaryotic phytoplankton), host-virus interactions/arms races, virology, molecular evolution and ecology, carbon flux biogeochemistry, and ecosystem processes. He has placed particular emphasis on host-virus interactions and how viruses impact carbon cycling, export and carbon sequestration. He currently leads an NSF-funded Growing Convergence Research (GCR)—one of NSF’s Top10 ideas—project blending biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, applied math and modeling to assess how viruses impact Earth’s carbon cycle and how prevailing ocean conditions exert fundamental controls on the predictive outcomes. He has worked actively to develop resources for the broader scientific community for engaging and participating in GCR-based research practices.

Kay got his PhD from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography under Farooq Azam, one of the pivotal minds in marine microbial ecology. He joined the faculty at Rutgers University in 2005. Over the course of his career, Kay has won several prestigious awards. These include the Raymond A. Lindeman Award from the Association of Limnology and Oceanography and the Edward A. Frieman Award from Scripps for excellence in research. He was selected as a Marine Microbiology Initiative Investigator by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation—one of 16 international scientists to receive this award— and a Kavli Fellow from the US National Academy of Sciences. At Rutgers, Kay has been selected for a Board of Trustees Research Fellow for Scholarly Excellence, a Faculty Scholar-Teacher Award and a Research Excellence Award.