Who wants to know how plant roots and microbes conspire to induce anoxic microsites in the rhizosphere? Check out @soiltycoon.bsky.social's latest paper in New Phytologist! lnkd.in/eCwxkwT2. THANKS to G Ceriotti, P De Anna, S. Borisov, J Berg, D Garrido-Sanz, C Keel, the NCCR Microbiomes and SNF.

New Phytologist@newphyt.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Root and microbial contributions to anoxic microsite formation in the rhizosphere: a microfluidic approach Lacroix et al. @soiltycoon.bsky.social @keiluweitlab.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New paper! 🎉 Check out how soil organic N dynamics within MAOM are mediated by management and geochemistry. Team effort led by Rachel Hestrin and Gabriella Griffin + major contributions from @andreajilling.bsky.social and @stuartsoil.bsky.social + many others. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Mineral-associated organic nitrogen pool size, composition, and accessibility mediated by agricultural management and soil geochemical characteristics

Mineral-associated organic matter (MAOM) contains a substantial portion of soil nitrogen (N). MAOM-N could serve as an important N source for crops, b…

sciencedirect.com

Job Alert 🚨 : Two-year Postdoc in Redox Biogeochemistry of Coastal Soils available. Focus on oxygen, metal and carbon cycling in the rhizosphere. shorturl.at/NybzX Start date: April 1st 2026, or upon mutual agreement. Salary: ~82 000 CHF/yr Deadline: Jan 5

👏Félicitations à Antoine Guisan et Marco Keiluweit, deux professeurs de la Faculté des géosciences et de l'environnement de l'UNIL, pour leur présence dans la liste Clarivate des chercheurs les plus cités au monde. 🌎 www.unil.ch/news/1763621... @unil.bsky.social

Deux professeurs de la FGSE parmi les plus cités, selon Clarivate

Antoine Guisan et Marco Keiluweit, tous deux professeurs à la Faculté des géosciences et de l’environnement de l’UNIL, figurent dans la prestigieuse liste des scientifiques les plus cité·es de 2025, é...

unil.ch

Very surprised (and pleased 😊) to be listed as 2025 Highly Cited Researcher for the first time! Great occasion to thank all the amazing mentors, collaborators and team members that I have been lucky enough to work with over the years! #HighlyCited2025 @fgse-unil.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social

When it comes to climate change, our diets matter — and matter a lot. Not to mention for biodiversity, water, and especially our own health. The updated EAT-Lancet report makes this abundantly clear. apnews.com/article/plan...

A recipe for avoiding 15 million deaths a year and climate disaster is fixing food, scientists say

Scientists are presenting new evidence that the worst effects of climate change can’t be avoided without a major transformation of food systems.

apnews.com

NEW PAPER 🚨 Curious how plant root exudation and soil texture might interact to form dynamic anoxic microsites in the #rhizosphere, and what they might mean for the fate of soil #carbon, nutrient or contaminent in #soils? Check out @soiltycoon.bsky.social's new paper in SBB: doi.org/10.1016/j.so...

Time for new group 📷! Really lucky to work with such a great group of people. Go Team!

We're super excited about my @unil.bsky.social colleague @pbenettin.bsky.social 's new Ecotrons! Fully climate controlled soil lysimeters! So many possibilities for manipulations and experiments!

Paolo Benettin@pbenettin.bsky.social · last yr.

The new Ecotron system manufactured by UGT and funded by the UNIL Faculty of Geoscience and the Environment @fgse-unil.bsky.social is operational! It's a rather big machine with a very big potential for ecohydrological experimentation.

PAPER 🚨 Organic matter associated with reactive #soil minerals (aka #MAOM) is often assumed to be the most persistence terrestrial #carbon pool. Here we introduce a new mechanistic framework for the vulnerability of this vast #carbon reservoir to disruption in the #rhizosphere. rdcu.be/euik0

Vulnerability of mineral-organic associations in the rhizosphere

Nature Communications - Organic matter associated with reactive soil minerals is assumed to be the most persistent terrestrial carbon pool. This work introduces a novel mechanistic framework for...

rdcu.be

Two junior professor chair positions are currently open at CEREGE, with a third position coming soon ! 🔬🌍 To learn more and apply, please visit our careers page: www.cerege.fr/en/le-cerege... #PaleoEnvironment #GlobalChanges #SocioEcosystems

This is a good start. While in government, I was dismayed by how the value of scicomm was devalued at multiple levels. The hard truth: This is not just about better PR, without effective scicomm, we lose public support for critical investments that benefit EVERYONE. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

9 Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything

nytimes.com

New pub in @aguadvances.bsky.social: "A Soil Scientist Goes to Washington: Navigating the Path to National #ScienceLeadership" #STEM Sharing my journey as DOE Office of Science Director, the challenges faced, and why inclusive excellence in STEM matters now more than ever. Read: tinyurl.com/ms2nhr4f

MSc and PhD students abroad: If you are interested in #microbiomes in #soils (or other systems) and keen on research in #Switzerland, consider applying for these #fellowships with us other other groups of the #NCCR Microbiomes nccr-microbiomes.ch/education/nc.... Interested? DM or Email.

NCCR Microbiomes Fellowships - NCCR

Since 2023, the NCCR Microbiomes invites applications for short-term research fellowships. These fellowships will support undergraduate and graduate students and postdocs from outside of the NCCR who ...

nccr-microbiomes.ch

Excited to christen our own boat „Flight“ during annual meeting of CMarsh, our @Simonsfoundation.org project to study C cycling in marsh soil (Zoe Cardon, MBL, Jennifer Bowen, Northeastern, Inke Forbrich, U of Toledo, Anne Giblin, MBL, Charles Harvey MIT, and Amanda Spivak, U of Georgia)

Applications now open for UNIL Summer School on Modelling for Evo Bio (1–6 Sept 2025, Lausanne)! Aimed at PhD students interested in formal approaches to evolutionary ecology questions like sexual selection, social & life-history evolution. Scholarships available. Pls share! www.shorturl.at/znk5g

Still ongoing

Soil Biogeochemistry @ UNIL@keiluweitlab.bsky.social · last yr.

Interested in spatially resolving microbial necromass formation and recycling? Check out Bouke Bentvelsen‘s poster at #EGU2025 today.

Interested in spatially resolving microbial necromass formation and recycling? Check out Bouke Bentvelsen‘s poster at #EGU2025 today.

It's timely that I re-post a tweet from July, 2022 (if you know why, you know), which I made soon after I left my first postdoc. Many empathized with me then and still do today. *the original tweet is gone b/c I quit Twitter, but it has been archived elsewhere: www.instagram.com/p/CgCRxO5OIG...

Today at #EGU2025: Samuel Steiner on controls of nitrogen use efficiency in agroecosystems

Come find us #EGU2025 this morning, featuring @soiltycoon.bsky.social on anoxic microsites and Junna Frei on MAOM destabilization in the rhizosphere.

Required reading for all soil scientists and those that would like to become one.

Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe@aaberhe.com · last yr.

📢 New pub: Defining #soil science: Balancing fundamental research and societal needs, in Soil Science Society of America Journal doi.org/10.1002/saj2... @teamrat.bsky.social & I argue, soil science, though crucial for solving environmental challanges, should not be defined solely by its applications

Phd in spatial planning and sustainable land use at Uni Lausanne! career5.successfactors.eu/career?_s.cr...

Sexual harassment allegations linked to drop in citations www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Sexual harassment allegations linked to drop in citations

But numbers remain steady for researchers who commit scientific misconduct.

nature.com

Lower survival rate among trainees in labs with highly productive mentors raises important concerns about what we value in academia. Many interesting things to stew over with this paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Academic mentees thrive in big groups, but survive in small groups - Nature Human Behaviour

Using longitudinal genealogical data on mentor–mentee relations and their publications, the authors find that mentees trained in larger groups tend to exhibit superior academic performance compared wi...

nature.com

Three years ago, I wrote this rapid ramble of a blog, "The kids are not ok", following my experience of a failed climate lecture. It remains the most read piece I have ever written. I just looked at it again: I can see why. It's ... just honest. jksteinberger.medium.com/the-kids-are...

The kids are not ok

Today I went to give a climate talk at my old high school in Geneva — and was given a masterclass in our failings. This is the story of a…

jksteinberger.medium.com

jobs.zalf.de/jobposting/b...

Last chance to apply for the postdoc/junior lecturer position in our group --> Deadline Jan 30th.

Soil Biogeochemistry @ UNIL@keiluweitlab.bsky.social · 2y ago

🚨We are filling a 5-year postdoc/junior lecturer position in Soil Biogeochemistry at the University of Lausanne. Fully-funded, independent, cutting-edge research on microbe-mineral-organic matter interactions, #climate, and #soils. Deadline: Jan 30. Start: Sept 2025. Info👇

🚨We are filling a 5-year postdoc/junior lecturer position in Soil Biogeochemistry at the University of Lausanne. Fully-funded, independent, cutting-edge research on microbe-mineral-organic matter interactions, #climate, and #soils. Deadline: Jan 30. Start: Sept 2025. Info👇

🚨 Always wanted to take a closer 👀 at mineral-organic interfaces in #soils? Then check out Floriane Jamoteau's new paper on the promises and challenges of photothermal IR microscopy to resolved interactions among microbes, minerals, and organics at sub-micron scales. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Probing Mineral-Organic Interfaces in Soils and Sediments Using Optical Photothermal Infrared Microscopy

Interactions among microbes, minerals, and organic matter are key controls on carbon, nutrient, and contaminant dynamics in soils and sediments. However, probing these interactions at relevant scales and through time remains an analytical challenge due to both their complex nature and the need for tools permitting nondestructive and real-time analysis at sufficient spatial resolution. Here, we demonstrate the ability and provide analytical recommendations for the submicron-scale characterization of complex mineral-organic microstructures using optical photothermal infrared (O-PTIR) microscopy. Compared to conventional infrared techniques, O-PTIR spectra collected at submicron resolution of environmentally relevant mineral and organic reference compounds demonstrated similar spectral quality and sensitivity. O-PTIR detection sensitivity was greatest for highly crystalline minerals and potentially for low molecular weight organic compounds. Due to photothermal effects, O-PTIR was more sensitive toward organics than minerals compared to conventional IR approaches, even when organics were mineral-bound. Moreover, O-PTIR resolved mineral-bound and unbound organics in a complex mixture at submicron (<500 nm) resolution. Finally, we provide best practices for artifact-free analysis of organic and mineral samples by determining the appropriate laser power using damage thresholds. Our results highlight the potential of O-PTIR microscopy for nondestructive and time-resolved analysis of dynamic microbe-mineral-organic matter interactions in soils and sediments.

pubs.acs.org