Jena Johnson

Pronunciation: Jeh-nah

The metabolic activity of microscopic and macroscopic organisms continually changes the chemistry of our planet, which in turn has both stimulated and limited the landscape that life can explore. This intimate relationship between geology, chemistry, and biology also forms a powerful tool that we can harness to understand the history of environments and life on Earth—as life impacts its surrounding geochemistry, organisms are leaving enigmatic clues of their presence and metabolic activities. Therefore, my research is driven by one of the fundamental questions in Geobiology: How can we identify and interpret the record of early life and its impact on the environment, preserved in sediments and rocks? My research integrates using microscale and nanoscale geochemical techniques to extract original information from Precambrian rocks with laboratory experiments to mechanistically understand microbe-mineral interactions and biogeochemical processes.