Jennifer Pett-Ridge

Biography

Jennifer Pett-Ridge is the lead author of Roads to Removal, a comprehensive assessment designed to help the United States identify pathways and opportunities to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.  She serves as a senior staff scientist and group leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a federally-funded, multi-disciplinary science and research facility in California.   Recently awarded a Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career award to work on responses of tropical soil microbes to climate change, she has also pioneered the use of NanoSIMS isotopic imaging in the fields of microbial biology and soil biogeochemistry. As lead scientist of the LLNL Genomic Science Biofuels Scientific Focus Area (SFA) from 2009–2018 and more recently the LLNL Soil Microbiome SFA (2018-present), she helps to coordinate multi-disciplinary teams that integrate biogeochemistry, stable isotope probing, NanoSIMS imaging, molecular microbial ecology, and computational modeling to understand biotic interactions and energy flow in microbial communities critical to soil nutrient cycling and sustainable biofuel production. She is the group lead for the Environmental Isotope Systems group in the Nuclear and Chemical Sciences division, managing a portfolio of over $25 million. Pett-Ridge has published over 110 peer-review articles, including a patent ROI for the “ChipSIP” approach linking microbial identity and function using NanoSIMS analysis of microarrays.