Title with Advance at UNM:

Additional Faculty Member Team

Your background in academia:

Dr. Cristina Takacs-Vesbach earned a B.A. from the University of Colorado, Boulder and her Ph.D. from Montana State University in Biology in 1999.  She is currently a Professor in the Department of Biology and the Director of the UNM MARC Program, an NIH funded training program for undergraduate students interested in biomedical research careers.  Tina is a microbial ecologist investigating the factors determining the productivity, diversity, and distribution of microorganisms in the natural environment.  Her research is focused on extreme environments where temperatures and other physico-chemical factors are inhospitable to most life, other than microorganisms.  In the absence of higher plants and animals, it is possible to study microbes without otherwise confounding interactions.  Her laboratory samples microbes from high and low temperature systems such as the thermal features of Yellowstone National Park or from the cold desert environment of Antarctica’s Dry Valleys.