Pearson Group

Ann Pearson

PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences
Murray and Martha Ross Professor of Environmental Sciences
Head Tutor

Ann Pearson is the Murray and Martha Ross Professor of Environmental Sciences. Her research focuses on applications of analytical chemistry, isotope geochemistry, and molecular biology to biochemical oceanography and Earth history. 

Through study of the “how, when, and why” of microbial processes, her work yields insight about environmental conditions on Earth today, in the past, and about potential human impacts on our future.  Recent projects have focused on the carbon and nitrogen cycles and on pathways of lipid biosynthesis.

Pearson received a Fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation in 2004, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship in 2009, and was named a Marine Microbiology Initiative Investigator of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2012. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Oceanography from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, where she was awarded the C. G. Rossby Award for Best Dissertation in the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate; and a B.A. in Chemistry from Oberlin College.

Research Group Coordinator: Priya Putta

EPS
20 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138

Office location: Geo Museum, Room 362
p: 617-384-8392, f: 617-495-8839

Jenan Kharbush

Associate
Pearson Group

Jenan is a microbial biogeochemist and oceanographer interested in the important connections between microbial ecology and marine biogeochemical cycling.

Originally from Wisconsin, Jenan obtained a B.A. in biology and chemistry from Ripon College in Ripon, WI. Subsequently she earned her PhD from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA, studying chemical oceanography in the lab of Dr. Lihini Aluwihare. Her thesis research focused on the use of molecular signatures to investigate microbial metabolic diversity and function in marine environments, and specifically targeted two important classes of microbial lipid biomarkers: bacterial hopanoids and intact polar diacylglycerols.