Eckhardt Karsten
Lab & Data Manager
Bio
Eckhardt is the Lab & Data Manager for the Hampton lab at UC Davis’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy. He pursued a combined Bachelor’s-Master’s program as a member of the Rachael Morgan-Kiss Polar Ecophysiology lab at Miami University of Ohio, receiving his B.A in Microbiology & Environmental Sciences in 2024 and completing his Msc in Microbiology in 2025. For his Master’s thesis, he used a molecular network approach to understand what role mycoplankton, or aquatic parasitic fungi, may play within the perennially ice-covered lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, and what implications this may have on nutrient cycling within these enclosed systems during the polar night.
Eckhardt is a microbial ecologist at heart, and has had quite the adventure throughout their academic career. From studying how microbes define stream health in Appalachia as part of a BIOREU, working alongside world-class scientists at Pacific Northwest National Lab as a SULI intern to understand how microbes store resources under drought, to finally focusing on polar studies, he has gathered a breadth of experience to support the multidisciplinary work which is more and more critical to ecological studies. He also has experience in plankton culture maintenance, record keeping, public speaking, field operations.
Outside of the lab, he enjoys to go hiking, rock climbing, and cooking.
He has also inherited the maintenance of this website from the previous lab manager, Braden Charles DeMattei!
Contact
Email: ekarsten@ucdavis.edu