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Work Experience

2024 -

Present

2018 - 2024

2019

2016 - 2018

NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow

CU Boulder - Boulder, CO

Supervisor: Professor Boswell Wing

Research Focus: Anaerobic organic degradation, nutrient recycling, global biogeochemical modeling.

Geobiology Ph.D. Candidate

Caltech - Pasadena, CA

Supervisor: Professor Alex Sessions 

Research Focus: Light stable isotope method development, anaerobic microbiology, metabolic modelling.

Guest Student Researcher

Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Pasadena, CA

Supervisor: Dr. Peter Willis

Research Focus: Astrobiology, amino acid racemization during organic extractions.

Research Scientist

MIT - Cambridge, MA

Supervisor: Professor Roger Summons

Research Focus: Organic geochemistry of Antarctic lakes, molecular fossils.

Education

2024

2020

2017

California Institute of Technology | 
Geobiology M.S.

Northeastern University |
Chemistry & Environmental Science B.S.

California Institute of Technology | 
Geobiology Ph.D.

Outreach

2020-Present

2021- 2023

2021- 2022

2019-2021

GO-Outdoors Initiative

With a group of Caltech graduate students, developed a program that creates and disseminates lesson plans and field trips for K-12 teachers in the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD). Our website here!

The mission is to enable young students of color to comfortably explore the outdoors using place-based learning. 

Funded and organized month-long outreach programs in environmental microbiology with high school students through the MBL ROCS grant. These pilot programs have sparked sustainable relationships with PUSD.

Chembites Writer

Wrote and edited monthly articles on scientific publications for public consumption. My posts typically focus on organic geochemistry, astrobiology, and stable isotope biogeochemistry. My profile can be found here.​

Orbitrap Educational Writer

Built educational modules for a future, public online platform that will help others to design and execute Orbitrap mass spectrometry measurements of stable isotope ratios. This work is in collaboration with researchers at Caltech, Penn State, and University of Texas at El Paso.

RISE Tutor

Weekly tutoring high school students in the Pasadena school district on subjects in science and math

California Institute of Technology | 
Geobiology M.S.

Northeastern University |
Chemistry & Environmental Science B.S.

Publications

Mueller, E., Panehal, J., Song, M., Boettger, J., Hansen, C., Heuer, V., Warr, O., Bach, W., Hinrichs, K., Eiler, J., Orphan, V., Sherwood Lollar, B., Sessions, A. Isotopic evidence of acetate cycling in the Precambrian continental crust. In review.

Mueller, E., Wu, F., Sessions, A. Quantifying Isotopologue Reaction Networks (QIRN): A modelling tool for predicting stable isotope fractionations in complex networks. Chemical Geology. (2022) 610, 121098. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2022.121098

 

Mueller, E., Sessions, A., Sauer, P., Weiss, G. & Eiler, J. Simultaneous, High-Precision Measurements of δ2H and δ13C in Nanomole Quantities of Acetate Using Electrospray Ionization-Quadrupole-Orbitrap Mass Spectrometry. Analytical Chemistry. (2022) 94 (2), 1092-1100. 10.1021/acs.analchem.1c04141

 

Matys, E. D., Mackey, T., Grettenberger, C., Mueller, E., Jungblut, A., Sumner, D. Y., … Summons, R. E. “Environmental controls on bacteriohopanepolyol profiles of benthic microbial mats from Lake Fryxell, Antarctica.” (2019). Geobiology, 17(5), 551–563. https://doi.org/10.1111/gbi.12353

 

Matys, E. D., Mackey, T., Grettenberger, C., Mueller, E., Sumner, D. Y., Hawes, I., & Summons, R. E. “Bacteriohopanepolyols across environmental gradients in Lake Vanda, Antarctica.” (2019). Geobiology, 17(3), 308–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/gbi.12335

Awards

NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellowship

 

3 Minute Thesis (Third Place, video)

Hummel-Gray Award

Resnick Sustainability Institute Scholar

European Association of Organic Geochemistry Research Award

MBL Research Outreach &

Communication in STEM Award​​

Waksman Scholarship for Microbial Diversity

Caltech Center for Microbial Environmental Interactions (CEMI) Grant

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS)

Sears B. Condit Award

American Institute of Chemists Student Award

Northeastern University Environmental Science Award

2024 - 2027

2024

2024

2023-2025

2022

2021

2021

2021

2018-2023

2018

2017

2017

2017

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