Diana Northup
Diana E. Northup is an American biologist who is a professor at the University of New Mexico. Her research considers the species that live in caves. Northup is a Fellow of the National Speleological Society and the Cave Research Foundation. She wrote the Wiley textbook "Microbial Ecology". She was awarded the National Speleological Society Science Prize in 2013. Early life and education. Northup was an undergraduate student at West Virginia University. She moved to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for graduate studies, where she earned a Master's of Library Science in 1972. Northup moved to the  University of New Mexico, where she earned a Master's degree in biology in 1988. She remained at the University of New Mexico for her doctoral research, where she studied the geomicrobiology of caves. Research and career. Northup joined the faculty at the University of New Mexico. At the UNM she started the Subsurface Life In Mineral Environments (SLIME) team. In particular, Northup studies the colourful ferromanganese deposits that line the walls of Lechuguilla and Spider Caves. Her work on the Lechuguilla Cave was featured on PBS' Nova. The microbes that form the deposits in these caves are involved with  the precipitation of calcium carbonate, which results in the formation of pool fingers. She is also interested in the hydrogen sulphide cave ('Cueva de las Sardinas') in Tabasco. Northup was elected Fellow of the National Speleological Society in 1992, and awarded their Science Prize in 2013.