Jesse Wilson is a microbial ecologist and environmental scientist who has researched microorganisms in aquatic ecosystems all over the world. His research involves assessing how changes in the microbial community and microbial functioning affects and is affected by changes in the environment, with a focus on positive feedback loops and microbial responses to phytoplankton blooms. He is particularly well versed in statistical and machine learning techniques that are capable of dealing with the high dimensional data that is obtained when looking at complex microbial communities.
Jesse received his B.S. in Environmental Science from CSU Channel Islands (2007) and his Ph.D. in Environmental Systems from UC Merced (2017). While at UCM, Jesse taught and created content for a wide range of natural science courses. He was also able to research the efficacy of different teaching strategies and presented a case study from this work at multiple conferences.
Jesse left Merced for San Diego in 2018 to work as a postdoctoral researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. At SIO, Jesse tracked drivers of change in the microbial community off the Scripps Pier by combining environmental time-series sampling with microbiology and bioinformatics. As much as he loved working at SIO, Jesse missed teaching and was ecstatic to start teaching with UCSD Extension.