The power of microbes captured assistant professor Patricia Holden’s fascination when she was a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in engineering.

"I was an engineer working with a microbiologist. That experience sparked my interest in how microbes are such strong forces on our planet," she says. "What we can’t see drives the functions we depend upon."

That fascination brought her to the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, where she teaches courses in microbiology and environmental microbiology for engineers and biological treatment of waste.

"I try to teach my students how to think, to use information," she says. "And along the way I avail them of tools they can use for a long time and, I hope, improve upon."

Rather than just memorize facts, her students adopt a way of thinking about how to use the information they have and how to gather new information to solve the challenges and problems environmentalists will face in the future.

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