We’re excited to welcome Fuhrman Lab grad student Natalia Shahril Ridza to the CBIOMES community.
Natalia Shahril Ridza joins the CBIOMES community as a member of the Fuhrman Lab at USC. She is broadly interested in the abundances, distribution patterns, and ecological roles of marine microbes—particularly how and why microbial communities are structured the way they are, and how these microorganisms drive key biogeochemical cycles in the ocean.
Natalia is currently a master’s student working with postdoctoral researchers Qicheng and Nathan to evaluate microbial community composition at the San Pedro Ocean Time Series (SPOT). Her work compares unfractionated and size‑fractionated samples to better understand how microbial assemblages vary across different size classes and what these patterns reveal about ecosystem function.
She is simultaneously completing her third year as an undergraduate at USC, where she is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences alongside her Master’s degree in Marine and Environmental Biology.
Outside of her academic work, Natalia enjoys reading, baking, and fencing.
Welcome to CBIOMES, Natalia!