Monday, April 13
7:30 P.M.
Zoom link will go to members via email.

Dr. Sydney Glassman will discuss the impacts of natural wildfires and experimental “pyrocosms” impacting soil fungal biomass, richness, and succession in various arid ecosystems including deserts, grasslands, and shrublands. She uses multiple methods including bioassays, genomics, and transcriptomics to explore the traits of pyrophilous fungi, or fungi that were rare or absent pre-fire, and increase massively in abundance post-fire, and determine how they are able to survive or thrive post-fire.

Sydney I. Glassman is an associate professor of microbiology and plant pathology at the University of California, Riverside. Her lab examines microbial ecology including arbuscular mycorrhizal and ectomycorrhizal fungi, soil bacteria, and fungi. She is particularly interested in how disturbances such as wildfires impact soil fungal and bacterial microbial succession and traits. She received her B.A. in biology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also received a Masters of Environmental Studies. She completed her Ph.D. in environmental science, policy, & management at UC Berkeley with Prof. Tom Brun, and she completed her post-doc on microbial contribution to leaf litter decomposition with Prof. Jennifer Martiny at UC Irvine. She has been a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology at UC Riverside since 2018 and was tenured in 2024.