Michelle A. O’Malley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004 and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware in 2009, where she worked with Prof. Anne Robinson to engineer overproduction of membrane proteins in yeast. O’Malley was a USDA- NIFA postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology at MIT, where she developed new strategies for cellulosic biofuel production. At UCSB, her research group aspires to solve grand challenges in sustainability, ecology, and medicine by deciphering how “unwieldy” microorganisms in the environment perform extraordinary tasks. Her team focuses on anaerobic microbes, which have evolved to work together in complex communities that decompose and recycle carbon biomass throughout the Earth – from our guts, to landfills, ocean sediments, and compost piles. O’Malley’s research has been featured on NPR’s Science Friday, the BBC Newshour, the LA Times, and several other media outlets. She was named one of the 35 Top Innovators Under 35 in the world by MIT Technology Review in 2015, one of the 10 “Scientists to Watch” by Science News in 2019 and is the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) – the highest honor bestowed on early career scientists by the US government. She is also the recipient of the ASM Award for Early Career Applied and Biotechnological Research, a DOE Early Career Award, an NSF CAREER award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the ACS BIOT Division Young Investigator Award, an ACS PMSE Division Young Investigator Award, an ACS WCC “Rising Star” Award, and a Hellman Faculty Fellowship.