Hey, I’m Caitlin

I’m a data engineer who loves astrobiology.

Recent Posts

Watch my PhD Defense: Biofilms in the Continental Subsurface

I recently finished up my PhD and defended on April 22, 2021, aka Earth Day. Check out the video below to watch my defense and get a taste of what I worked on for the past five years!

Using a Green Screen in Premiere Pro

Hello! Today I want to share a quick tutorial on how to use a green screen in Adobe Premiere Pro! Premiere Pro is a video editor in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite that’s got a ton of great features that make movie making a breeze!

Jupyter notebooks in PyCharm

Today we’re going on a Python adventure using Jupyter notebooks and PyCharm! First, let’s talk about what these are. Jupyter Notebook is a web application where you can create interactive coding documents, supporting many programming languages including both Python and R as well as Markdown.

Making beautiful interactive slides with revealJS

Today I’ll show you how to spice up your presentations with revealJS in R. This is an HTML presentation framework that allows you to share your slides on the web, add custom animations, embed websites into your slides, and more!

Thermodynamic Modeling with CHNOSZ

Are you curious what sorts of metabolic processes might be occurring at your study site? Using in situ geochemical data, you can model the Gibbs free energy available from metabolic reactions and predict which metabolisms are energetically favorable!

Recent Publications

Iron-Fueled Life in the Continental Subsurface: Deep Mine Microbial Observatory, South Dakota, USA

Iron-bearing minerals are key components of the Earth’s crust and potentially critical energy sources for subsurface microbial life. …

Rock-Hosted Subsurface Biofilms: Mineral Selectivity Drives Hotspots for Intraterrestrial Life

The continental deep subsurface is likely the largest reservoir of biofilm-based microbial biomass on Earth, but the role of mineral …

Electrochemical evidence for in situ microbial activity at the Deep Mine Microbial Observatory (DeMMO), South Dakota, USA

The subsurface is Earth’s largest reservoir of biomass. Micro‐organisms are the dominant lifeforms in this habitat, but the …

Mineral‐hosted biofilm communities in the continental deep subsurface, Deep Mine Microbial Observatory, SD, USA

Deep subsurface biofilms are estimated to host the majority of prokaryotic life on Earth, yet fundamental aspects of their ecology …

Establishment of the Deep Mine Microbial Observatory (DeMMO), South Dakota, USA, a Geochemically Stable Portal Into the Deep Subsurface

Identifying temporal trends in deep subsurface geomicrobiology is challenging as it requires both in-depth knowledge of in situ …