Jennifer Pett-Ridge


Jennifer Pett-Ridge is an American biologist who is a senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of California, Merced and at an investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute. Her research makes use of systems biology and biogeochemistry to uncover function in microbial communities. She was awarded a 2021 United States Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award.
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Early life and education

Pett-Ridge studied biology and studies in the environment at Yale University. She moved to the Yale School of the Environment for graduate studies, and specialized in forest science. She worked as a US Forest Service technician at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. After earning her master's degree, Pett-Ridge joined the University of California, Berkeley for her doctoral research. Her research considered how fluctuating redox regimes impact nitrogen cycling and the ecology of microbial communities. She was appointed a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and vice chair of soil ecology at the Ecological Society of America.

Research and career

Pett-Ridge serves as lead scientist for the Microbes Persis soil microbiome Science Focus Area and Terraforming Soil Energy Earthshot Research Center, supported by the Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research. In 2023, Pett-Ridge was appointed lead of the LLNL Carbon Initiative. Pett-Ridge has worked in microbial ecology in an effort to understand and predict future climates. She developed isotopic tools and imaging tools to quantify how climate influences the ecology of soil, microorganisms, and plants. She was supported by a United States Department of Energy Early Career award to investigate how soil microbial communities responded to changing soil oxygen conditions. In particular, she developed nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry. In 2023, she led the Roads to Removal report, an economy-wide, county-level evaluation of how atmospheric carbon removal can get the USA to 'net-zero.'
Pett-Ridge has investigated whether it is possible to sequester carbon dioxide using plants like switchgrass. The roots of switchgrass can extend 50 feet down, which can contribute to carbon sequestration by locking carbon deep into ground.
In 2020, Pett-Ridge was appointed as an investigator in the Sustainability Theme of in the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation.

Awards and honors

Select publications

  • Noah S Sokol, Eric Slessarev, Gianna Marschmann, Alexa A Nicolas, Steven Blazewicz, Eoin Brodie, Mary K Firestone, Megan Foley, Rachel Hestrin, Bruce Hungate, Benjamin Koch, Bram Stone, Matthew Sullivan, Olivier Zablocki, LLNL Soil Microbiome Consortium, Jennifer Pett-Ridge. “Life and death in the soil microbiome: how ecological processes influence biogeochemistry“. Nature Reviews Microbiology 20: 415-430. .
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