Welcome to the Louca lab at the University of Oregon. Our lab studies the ecology and evolution of microorganisms in natural environments, at both local and global scales. Our main techniques include high-throughput DNA sequencing, bioinformatics, statistics and mathematical modeling, but we also do field work and lab work. We also develop new scientific software and mathematical techniques, which often find applications outside of microbiology as well.

Why microbes?
Microorganisms largely control biogeochemical fluxes in virtually every ecosystem and have shaped Earth's surface chemistry over billions of years. They strongly impact our health, soil functioning, ocean productivity and climate, to name a few examples. They also happen to be excellent model organisms for understanding the fundamentals of evolution and for populating laboratory-scale experimental ecosystems.

Prospective students
We are generally open to new PhD students. Students should bring strong curiosity and passion, as well as solid quantitative skills such as coding and math.