Patricia Holden

Professor
Environmental Microbiology
Office: Bren Hall 3508
Lab: Bren Hall 2318
Education
PhD, Soil Microbiology, UC Berkeley
MEng, Civil & Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley
MS, Civil Engineering, Purdue University
BS, Civil Engineering, University of Tennessee
Bio
Professor Holdenās background is in civil/environmental engineering and soil microbiology. Her research cross-cuts these fields. She is the Director of the UCSB Natural Reserve System, equivalent to 50% of her teaching credit.
Research Interests
Bacteria are both agents of environmental restoration and agents of environmental degradation. For the former, bacteria in nature cycle nutrients and transform pollutants; our interest is in developing a predictive understanding of bacterial distribution and function in natural and polluted environments. For the latter, bacteria in human waste are indicative of disease-causing organisms; we want to know the relationships between fecal indicator bacteria and the presence of human waste, the value of culture-independent methods for detecting wastes and pathogens, and the transport and fate of fecal bacteria in the environment.
Current interests and projects include:
Vadose zone microbial ecology
- Biofilms in unsaturated environments
- Microbial extracellular polymeric substances (EPS)
- Vadose zone saccharides
- Community composition, diversity, function
- Water stress
- Environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM) of soils and soil microbes
- Microsite phenomena
- Cell-cell communication in dry systems
- Reaction-diffusion modeling
Coastal and estuarine bacterial ecology
- Pollutant interactions with bacterial communities in estuarine ecosystems
- Markers of human sewage in aquatic bacterial communities
- Bacterial communities as tracers for other pollutants
- Relationships between urbanization and coastal bacteriological water quality
Bacterial interactions with nanoparticles
- Bacterial uptake and decomposition of CdSe quantum dots, TiO2 and other nanoparticles
- Toxicity of engineered nanoparticles to environmental bacteria
- Planktonic and biofilm bacterial interactions with nanoparticles
Urban water quality and pollution biodegradation in soils, sediments
- Roles of urban infrastructure on groundwater and surface water quality
- Geospatial analysis of relationships between pollutant sources, concentration gradients, and receptors
- Minimally invasive remediation strategies for multi-contaminants in soil and groundwater