A University of Colorado at Boulder researcher who studies tiny, rock-energized life forms has been named one of 20 promising young scientific researchers by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Alexis Templeton, an assistant professor in CU-Boulder's geological sciences department, is among this year's recipients of Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering. Each scientist selected for the fellowships will receive an unrestricted research grant of $625,000 over five years.
Templeton, who earned her doctorate at Stanford University, plans to use the Packard funding to build an interdisciplinary group of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers who will conduct cutting-edge research at the interface of geology and microbiology. "It really gives a massive kick-start to our program," Templeton said this week after learning of the award.
Last year, Templeton was recognized as one of Popular Science's "Brilliant 10" young scientists for her research on newly identified metal-ingesting and mineral-forming bacteria.
Her research focuses on little-understood microorganisms in subsurface environments that get their energy from water reacting with rocks rather than sunlight or organic carbon. Templeton said she wants to understand how these tiny life forms survive and shape larger, more complex environments around them.
"We know these types of organisms exist but we don't know what controls their distribution on the planet, who most of them are, many aspects of how they function and the combined geochemical effects of their activity at local to global scales," she said. "If we're lucky, we might one day also find that some of these types of microbes ultimately resemble some of the earliest forms of life on the planet."
In singling her out for a fellowship, the Packard Foundation cited Templeton's unique research with high-energy X-rays derived from synchrotron light-sources, which she uses to decipher the chemical reactions mediated by microorganisms such as bacteria, the most common life forms on the planet.
During expeditions in search of microbial life in unexpected places, Templeton has explored undersea volcanoes in submersibles near Hawaii and has plumbed the depths of an active molybdenum mine in Colorado.
She was one of two CU-Boulder researchers nominated for this year's Packard fellowship, and among 100 researchers nationwide. Other researchers selected for this year's fellowships are based at the University of Washington, the University of California, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among other campuses. They specialize in chemistry, chemical biology, astronomy, physics, ecology, astrophysics and biomedical engineering.
The Packard Fellowship Program was developed in 1988 out of David Packard's commitment to strengthen university-based science and engineering programs. By supporting unusually creative U.S. researchers early in their careers, the foundation hopes to develop scientific leaders, further the work of promising young scholars and support efforts to attract talented graduate students into university research.
The program has awarded 383 fellowships totaling more than $220 million over the past 18 years to faculty members at 52 top U.S. universities.
To read more about the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and CU-Boulder's geological sciences department visit and