Catalina Cuellar Gempeler
Catalina Cuellar Gempeler (born August 25, 1984) is a Colombian microbial ecologist and marine microbiologist, currently teaching and doing research at Humboldt State University. Her research focuses mainly on understanding microbial meta-community and eco-evolutionary dynamics. The Catalina Cuellar-Gempeler lab is currently focused on studying the interactions between hosts and their microbial communities. The lab's main emphasis is on the microbes used in digestion in the Californian and Eastern, carnivorous pitcher plants. In March 2021, Cuellar-Gempeler was awarded an Early Career grant for $1 million by the National Science Foundation. Early life  and education. Cuellar-Gempeler was born on August 25, 1984 in Bogota, Colombia. She is the oldest of three children. Her father Carlos Cuellar is a Colombian, gastroenterologist in Bogota, while her mother, Emilia Gempeler, of Swiss descent, is a senior occupational health nurse. As a young child, and teenager, Cuellar-Gempeler attended Helvetia school, a private multilingual (Spanish, German, French) Swiss school located in Suba, Bogotá, Colombia. Cuellar-Gempeler showed an interest in microbes early on while on a field trip to Sierra Nevada del Cocuy in Colombia. When she was back home from this field trip she could n’t stop thinking about the microbes living around her, whose lives unfold much quicker than human lives do. Soon after her high-school graduation, Catalina started her studies at Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, graduating with both a B.Sc. in biology and a B.Sc. in microbiology in 2008. During college, Catalina was an outstanding student, who thrived in all subjects ranging from Cellular biology to Chemistry and Physics. She attended graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin where she earned a PhD in integrative biology. Catalina's PhD thesis focused on ecological and evolutionary processes driving crustacean -associated microbial communities. Specifically, her PhD project investigated the effects of fiddler crab on sediment bacteria in the Yucatán Peninsula, under the supervision of Pablo Munguia. Academic career. After obtaining her Ph.D. in 2015, Cuellar-Gempeler was hired as a post-doctoral scholar at Florida State University for two years. In 2018, she and her husband moved to Humboldt State University in Aracata, California, where she is an assistant professor. Cuellar-Gempeler created the Catalina Cuellar-Gempeler lab where she investigates the functioning and assembly of microbial communities hosted by animals and plants. The lab's main research themes comprise  Ecological theory, Microbiology and Natural History. Research and teaching. Since the beginning of her academic career, Catalina has been interested not only in understanding the interaction between metazoans and microorganisms, but also in environmental education. Before graduating from Universidad de Los Andes, she took a semester off to take a field guiding course at Kruger National Park, South Africa, where she improved her knowledge about African ecosystems and her leading and teaching skills. As a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin she worked as an assistant teacher for Molecules to Organisms, Ecology, Limnology and Scientific inquiry. Currently , at her assistant professor appointment she is teaching General Microbiology, Microbial Ecology and Marine microbiology. Cuellar Gempeler's lab main focus is on: Biodiversity-Ecosystem function relationships in pitcher plant meta-communities, Microbial ecology of conservation of Astragalus applegatei's mycorrhizae, and Microbiome of invasive marine invertebrates. Her lab's main research areas are: Awards and honors. Catalina has been awarded an Early Career grant for $1 million by the National Science Foundation. This award is given to outstanding academics who have great potential to become role models in their communities while engaging in both research and education. Catalina