Barbara received her PhD from the University of Vienna in 2019 and has worked as a Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at DOME since 2021 and a group leader since 2024. Her research team currently consists of Niharika Sharma (Postdoc), Zeynep Kurt (PhD student) and Manuela Felsberger (MSc Student).
Barbara and her team combine diverse isotope approaches, cultivation, and multi-omics techniques to quantify biogeochemical processes and identify novel microorganisms and metabolic pathways. In 2024 she has received an ERC Starting Grant to investigate microbial methane cycling in aquatic ecosystems and has also been granted an Austrian Science Fund (FWF) START Award in 2023.
