Member SpotlightsAn Environmental Microbiologist Combines Research and Teaching for a Significant Impact in Ecology Mark A. Schneegurt, Ph.D. A Member Since December 1997   During his undergraduate years, Dr. Schneegurt attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York where he majored in biology and minored in biochemistry. He continued on at the Institute to earn a master’s degree in biology. At Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island), his Ph.D. thesis work involved elucidating the biosynthetic pathway of porphyrins, particularly heme and chlorphyll. Dr. Schneegurt studied the first committed step in the porphyrin biosynthetic pathway by examining the three-step enzymatic process that transforms the amino acid, glutamate, into the heme and chlorophyll precursor 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA). He studied cell-free plant and algal preparations that require tRNA for this conversion. This was an unusual finding because tRNAs are normally only involved in protein synthesis—not other biosynthetic pathways.After receiving his doctorate, Dr. Schneegurt accepted a postdoctoral fellowship position at the pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly and Company. After a couple of years, he realized that he was not interested in working in industry and went to Purdue University in Indiana, first as an postdoctoral fellow in the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training program and then as research faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences. Working on the NASA project appealed to Dr. Schneegurt because he had always been interested in space exploration. The aims of the project were to better understand how to feed people on the way to Mars, and he was part of a team studying nitrogen fixation and gas exchange balance in closed environments. This work nicely complemented his other investigations at Purdue, which involved exploring the biological processes controlling nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis. While at Purdue, Dr. Schneegurt also began Cyanosite, a webserver for cyanobacterial research, which he still maintains (www-cyanosite.bio.purdue.edu) Because he was worried about obtaining future funding in basic research in this area, Dr. Schneegurt accepted another postdoctoral position in a more applied area of research at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. This position evolved into a research assistant professor position and now—as an assistant professor at Wichita State University— he maintains visiting professor rights at Notre Dame. During his tenure at Notre Dame, his research was focused on the field of environmental microbiology. In a collaboration funded by Chevron, Dr. Schneegurt studied ways to improve the quality of heavy crude oil by using microbes. This work had implications for bioremediation. He also studied the properties of bacteria that bind to geosurfaces using the Advanced Photon Source at the Argonne National Laboratory (Illinois). In a related project, Dr. Schneegurt investigated the feasibility of cleaning up heavy metal contamination in bodies of water using inexpensive biomass such as ground corn cobs. Filtering water through certain types of biomass produces cleaner water and concentrates the toxins into a more manageable form for removal. Dr. Schneegurt came to the Wichita State University with a strong interest in microbial ecology. He has continued working with his colleagues at Notre Dame on the heavy metals project and has received Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) funding to measure the bioavailabity of metals using bioassays with the hopes of developing chemical assays to quickly and easily perform large-scale contamination assessments. He is very excited about a recent grant he was awarded from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to take part in establishing the Salt Plains Microbial Observatory in Cherokee, Oklahoma as part of the Microbial Observatories Program. His team will be studying archaea and bacteria using classical microbial culture techniques and culture-independent, molecular biology techniques to see how these organisms respond to extreme changes in their environment (e.g., salinity, temperature, UV, etc.). These investigations include establishing the natural history of the organisms and will continue all the way through to addressing important ecological questions. Because of his passionate commitment to providing opportunities for students of all ages to “do” science, Dr. Schneegurt has an open-door policy in his lab, i.e., if someone shows an interest, he will find him or her a project. Currently his lab is composed of three graduate and five undergraduate students, all of which are conducting their own research. In the summers, he supports high school teachers and students who want to work in his lab. As part of his interest in mentoring, Dr. Schneegurt was instrumental in forming a biology club on campus and has established a number of educational outreach programs, some of which are available on the web. Members of his lab generate slide sets of microscopic samples that are then donated to the local school districts for kindergarten through twelfth grade students. Despite being extremely busy, Dr. Schneegurt always makes it home in time to play with his six-year old son, Noah, and his friends and to have a family dinner. He also enjoys playing the piano and the guitar and when he even has extra time, collecting stamps. ### << Previous Next >> [ View All Member Spotlights ] |
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