John R. Casey PhD
CBIOMES Postdoctoral Scholar
John R. Casey is a postdoctoral scholar in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He received his BS at the College of Charleston in 2007, joined the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science as a technician from 2007 to 2010, and received his PhD from the University of Hawaii in 2017.
Casey’s research focuses on microbial oceanography, especially the fundamental principles guiding the organization and function of microbial metabolisms and their influence on marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles.
Combining observations, experimental approaches and emerging computational methods, Casey has made contributions to the understanding of long-term microbial community dynamics, of patterns underlying heterotrophic growth and respiration of dissolved organic matter, and the metabolism of Prochlorococcus, a globally important cyanobacterium. Casey is developing and applying optimization tools to integrate environmental, physiological and multi-‘omics measurements from cultivated and natural microbial communities into a network-based computational framework.
By expanding network coverage of the metabolic functional diversity, and by exploring the thermodynamic objectives of microbial growth, he is working to develop quantitative systems-level predictions of phenotypes, activities and interactions within marine microbial communities.