Barbara Bahnmann

MIKROBIOLOGICKY USTAV - AVCR, V.V.I. (IMIC), Czech Republic
Brief Biography: 

Barbara Bahnmann is a PhD student in the Laboratory of Environmental Microbiology at the Institute of Microbiology of the ASCR in Prague, Czech Republic. She earned her BES in Environment and Resource Studies at the University of Waterloo and worked for several years in the environmental education sector.

She returned to graduate studies in fungal ecology in 2006 and completed her Masters degree at Western University.  Her thesis studies focused on applying molecular techniques to the study of soil basidiomycete communities under experimental agricultural treatments in Michigan, USA.

As part of the Trainbiodiverse initiative Barbara continues to focus on soil fungal communities. Her main research interests include characterizing the taxonomic composition of soil microbial communities and developing methods of assessing contribution of fungi to ecosystem processes. For her PhD research she will investigate the biogeography and ecology of fungal communities in a temperate forest, identifying factors affecting their distribution as well as identifying the diversity of decomposition-related genes by the most abundant taxa and expression of these genes in the soil environment.