Roman Stocker is a professor of environmental engineering at ETH Zurich and formerly at MIT.
Roman pioneered a new approach to microbial ecology, based on the combination of microfluidics, video microscopy and mathematical modeling, which allowed him to address a long-standing challenge in oceanography: the need to study marine microbes quantitatively at the single-cell level and with explicit consideration of the highly dynamic processes that shape their lives. This microscale, mechanistic understanding is then used to better understand the ecological and biogeochemical impacts that microorganisms have at ocean-scale. Roman’s research group, which brings together engineers, physicists, biologists and mathematicians, uses quantitative experiments in the laboratory and sometimes in the field in combination with individual-based and continuum models to understand microscale processes in the ocean, including microbial motility and sensing, the role of microbes in the marine carbon cycle, harmful algal blooms, coral disease, oil degradation, viral infection and bacteria–phytoplankton interactions.
Roman has brought to the field a combination of
- imaging and image analysis, revealing previously unseen processes,
- new engineering tools, providing unprecedented access to quantitative experiments on marine microbes and enabling the interrogation of microbial behaviours directly in situ,
- an intimate connection between observations and mathematical models, necessary to identify general principles of microbial ecosystems.
More recently, the group has expanded its interests to apply the same integration of different approaches to the study of ecohydraulics, where the effects of fluid flow and transport on aquatic organisms from invertebrates to fish are studied in order to understand the effect of anthropogenic disturbances on freshwater ecosystems. Roman’s work has frequently appeared in high-profile journals including Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and has been featured in popular media including the BBC, CNN and The New York Times.