How microorganisms in soil influence the environment and us in a changing climate
SMiL members participated in organizing, running, and presenting at the 2026 Joint COBRE Symposium on May 8th, 2026 at the East West Center on Mānoa campus! Click on the links to learn more!
Keynote talk by Jack Gilbert: Precision microbiome medicine: Identifying diagnostics and treatments
It was a busy week at UHM last week – the C-MĀIKI Symposium was a huge success on May 7, and Joint COBRE Symposium, UROP Symposium and Tester Symposium were a blast on May 8! Xiaoding presented two posters and one talk, Aaron presented two posters, and Simon presented his research talk in two days! They got great feedback from these presentations. Well done our presenters! Hans and Gracie both helped with logistics of the C-MĀIKI Symposium and Joint COBRE Symposium, and Maggie was on the organizing committee of both. Thank you all SMiL members!
Check out our study on how reduced precipitation influence the translocation and microbial processing of living root-derived carbon – incorporating carbon stable isotope probing and solute transport modeling, we show that slightly reduced soil water may concentrate rhizodeposit carbon near roots, causing more diverse microbes to feed on it, and potentially influence soil carbon storage.
Check it out! This is our first paper on the topic of Legionella – see how this pathogen distributes in world soils, and how amazingly little we know about its diversity – https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.10.710744v2.full.
We are recruiting an undergraduate research assistant for our Summer 2026 UROP Mentoring Grant! See eligibility, project description, and application information in the poster or here. Send an email to Maggie for questions!
Our lab participated in the 2025 Discover Mānoa on November 15! We had a table showcasing how soil and its microbiome are amazing. Simon and Hans prepared Petri dishes with bacterial and fungal colonies; Xiaoding and Aaron designed carbon and nitrogen cycling clip art; we also ran the experiment of adding hydrogen peroxide to life vs. sterile soils to see how microbial enzymes in soil can make hydrogen peroxide bubble! What a fun day among all the amazing exhibits!
Hans presented his ongoing study about Legionella’s distribution in global soils at the 1st SOEST Symposium on November, 13, at the East West Center Conference Hall. This is the only talk from PBRC at the Symposium, showcasing how climate change can affect huma health via the function and ecology of microbes.
Dr. Hans Singh delivered his talk titled “A Global Analysis of Legionella Distribution and Diversity Across Soils” at the C-MĀIKI M4 seminar on Oct 29th, 2025. Hans introduced why a global analysis is a good idea to assess Legionella’s distribution along environmental gradients across continents, and presented his bioinformatic tools to gather 4000+ soil microbiome into one picture! The audience had passionate discussion after the talk.
Undergraduate student Simon Lee worked hard the entire summer 2025 isolating Legionella from soil, water, and air near the Mānoa Stream. He presented his poster “Isolation, Identification, and Enumeration of Legionella spp. From Environmental Samples” at UROP’s SURE Symposium on August 2nd. Great job Simon!
Simon will stay in the lab for the Fall 2025 semester and keep refining the protocol to isolate environmental Legionella.
Dr. Hans Singh joined us as a postdoc to lead our Legionella project! He came from Dr. Paul Jensen’s lab in the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, now ready to apply his expertise in environmental microbiology, natural product and metaanalysis to explore soils in Hawaiʻi. Welcome Hans!
Hawaiʻi Soil Microbiome Lab 