The Emile F. Pernot Distinguished Professorship in Microbiology
The Emile F. Pernot Distinguished Professorship in Microbiology was established with a gift from the estate of Mabel Pernot, who died in 1991. Miss Pernot was the daughter of Emile Pernot, who helped establish the University's microbiology department a century before.
Miss Pernot was born in 1900 and, except for a brief period, lived her entire life in Corvallis.
When her father was hired by OSU in 1890, he was the University's first bacteriologist and photographer. His studies ranged from plant diseases to dentistry and medicine to the effect of microorganisms on food preservation. His work in poultry diseases lead him to be known as the "father of avian tuberculosis."
Miss Pernot's grandfather, George Coote, also played an important role in OSU's history—he was the University's first professor of horticulture and was responsible for many of the plantings that grace the older part of the campus today.
The Emile F. Pernot Distinguished Professorship in Microbiology is awarded to a Professor of Microbiology at OSU who is recognized as a distinguished contributor to the microbiological science, has a documented record of contributions and will continue to make contributions to the education and research missions of Oregon State University. The award includes funds to be used by the recipient’s research program and in support of the Department of Microbiology.
Stephen Giovannoni has been selected as the third recipient of the Emile F. Pernot Distinguished Professorship in Microbiology. Previous holders of the Pernot Professorship were John Fryer and Jo-Ann Leong.
Stephen J. Giovannoni
Stephen Giovannoni has been on the Oregon State University faculty since 1988. An avid surfer, he has long been fascinated by ocean ecology. This fascination led to a scientific career pursuing the ecological role of bacterioplankton in the ocean’s surface. Initially, Professor Giovannoni’s laboratory identified the major prokaryotic groups inhabiting this niche and, more recently, his lab has cultivated individual species to explore the cellular adaptations that allow these organisms to affect biogeochemical cycles, especially carbon cycling.
Professor Giovannoni’s work led to the discovery of many groups of marine bacteria, the most well known of which is the SAR11 clade. To better understand how these organisms are operating in the ocean surface layer, Stephen Giovannoni’s lab is developing new approaches for culturing and identifying planktonic microorganisms at very low cell densities so that they can be studied in a laboratory setting.
His experiments led to the first cultivation of many marine bacteria, including SAR11, which has now been named Pelagibacter. Professor Giovannoni’s current efforts are focused on understanding the specific biochemical mechanisms that allow Pelagibacter and other species to cycle carbon in the vast oceanic environment.
