@Thomas_Jeffries Dr Thomas Jeffries is a Microbial Ecologist with a wide range of expertise in molecular microbiology, bioinformatics and microbial biogeography. He obtained his PhD. in 2012 from Flinders University (Adelaide Australia). During his doctoral work he used metagenomics to investigate shifts in microbial community gene abundance in response to salinity and nutrient gradients within a hypersaline lagoon (the Coorong, Australia). His work demonstrated the influence of environmental variables on the abundance of salinity tolerance and photosynthesis pathways in bacterial genomes on local scales. On global scales he demonstrated that bacterial genome content is broadly determined by the physical substrate type of the habitat. His postdoctoral research has focused on marine microbial biogeography, the microbiome of Sydney Harbour, The distribution of marine fungal diversity and the role of microscale interactions in structuring microbial communities. Dr. Jeffries is also a contributor to the INDIGOV expedition utilizing citizen oceanography to investigate marine microbiomes on global scales. Dr Jeffries has extensive experience in using bioinformatics and ecogenomic tools to understand the diversity and function of microbiomes. He also is experienced in using multivariate statistics and network analysis to visualise highly complex data sets. He regularly runs tutorial workshops on various software packages. He is a steering committee member and chair of the Joint Academic Microbiology Seminar Series (JAMS) and is on the local organising committee for the Australian Society for Microbiology. Dr. Jeffries joined the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment in 2014. His current work will focus on a CRC-CARE funded project to apply next-generation 'omics' tools and a systems-biology approach to understand the microbial bioremediation of organophosphorus and aromatic hydrocarbon contaminants, which pose a major global and local threat to human and environmental health. This work will deliver a predictive framework directly applicable to practitioners to aid the decision-making process and increase the efficiency of remediating contaminated sites