Alexandra Worden

Who is Alexandra Worden?

Alexandra Z. Worden is a marine microbial ecologist and genome scientist. She is an associate scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and professor of ocean sciences adjunct at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Worden’s research has focused on the physiology and ecology of picophytoplankton, unicellular organisms that are responsible for a large portion of ocean primary production. Worden’s early work focused on methods development for investigating populations while still in the nature environment and their roles in the carbon cycle, and this theme has continued through her career.

During an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Institution of Oceanography Worden was recognized for research that revealed the importance of small eukaryotic phytoplankton known as picoeukaryotes, demonstrating that despite low abundance they had a disproportionately high contribution to picoplanktonic primary production. A second study by Worden while in the laboratory of Farooq Azam overturned the long running idea that Vibrio cholerae existed primarily attached to copepods in aquatic systems.