Catherine Hernandez

Catherine Hernandez is a microbial ecologist and evolutionary biologist, currently serving as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow and YIBS Donnelley Fellow in the Turner lab at Yale University. Her research focuses on understanding how environmental factors like temperature influence bacteria-phage interactions, with a particular emphasis on marine microbes and climate change impacts. She completed her PhD in the Koskella lab at the University of California, Berkeley, studying plant-associated bacteria-phage dynamics.

Her current projects include developing a strain library of marine isolates from Long Island Sound to explore thermal responses in microbes, investigating adaptation mechanisms to abiotic stressors like desiccation, and analyzing viral genes associated with temperature tolerance using metagenomic data. Collaborations with undergraduates, such as Jaime J. Cha and Kieren Leif Dykstra, highlight her commitment to mentoring.

Key research themes include microbial trait variation, stress adaptation, and the ecological relevance of phage interactions. Her work bridges field studies, lab experiments, and computational methods, addressing global challenges in climate change biology and microbial ecology. Awards include prestigious fellowships from NSF and YIBS, underscoring her contributions to the field.