Ashley Shade


Ashley L. Shade is a Director of Research with the Institute of Ecology and the Environment of Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Shade is an adjunct associate professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences. She is best known for her work in microbial ecology and plant-microbe interactions.

Education

Shade received her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Susquehanna University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the supervision of Katherine D. McMahon. Her dissertation was on the disturbance ecology of freshwater microbial communities in vertically stratified lakes that experience lake turnover. Shade did her post-doctoral work at Yale University under Jo Handelsman as a Gordon and [Betty Moore Foundation] Scholar in the Life Sciences Research Foundation.

Career and research

After completing her post-doctoral research at Yale, Shade moved to Michigan State University in 2014. Shade began her research group at Michigan State University as an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and the . In 2021, Shade was promoted to associate professor. The lab was a founding member of the and a part of the, the, and the at Michigan State University. In her career, Shade has promoted the importance of data accessibility, reproducibility, and diversity, equity, and inclusion and has spoken about .
Shade has contributed to the fields of microbial ecology and plant-microbe interactions. For example, The Earth Microbiome Project works to collect and analyze microbial samples across the globe. These contributions have contributed to the general understanding of resilience in freshwater, soil and plant-associated microbiomes.
Shade's Lab focuses on microbial ecology and plant-microbe interactions by using Omics approaches to evaluate microbiomes. The lab has three main areas of research including ecological microbiome resilience, interactions in synthetic microbial communities, and plant-microbe-soil interactions to promote resilience to climate change.
In 2022, Shade moved to France to join the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique as a director of research. She is part of the . There, she is working on how to increase the resilience of natural and agricultural systems, including crops and soils, by maintaining microbial functions despite changing environmental conditions due to climate change.
Shade is a senior editor for the American Society for Microbiology's journal mSystems and has previously been a guest editor for Phytobiomes Journal.

Selected awards and recognition

Selected publications

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