Belinda Ferrari

Belinda Ferrari is a newly appointed Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Science at UNSW. Her research area is environmental microbiology where she specialises in uncovering Antarctica's soil biodiversity by performing discovery-based and applied research. Her team discovered a previously overlooked primary production process where bacteria literally ‘live on thin air’. She coined this process ‘atmospheric chemosynthesis’ and published these findings in the prestigious journal Nature. Belinda's team also uses microbes as indicators of soil health, for the assessment of ecosystem recovery during bioremediation and for developing site-specific ecotoxicity assessments. Belinda's future goals are to continue to challenge our understanding of the nutritional limits and the boundaries of life, while training the next generation of scientists.