Rate My Professor Kathryn Scott

Kathleen M. Scott is Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida. She earned her Ph.D. in Biology from Pennsylvania State University in 1998 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Her research centers on the metabolism of autotrophic microorganisms, with a primary focus on chemolithoautotrophs from marine environments such as deep-sea hydrothermal vents and surface ocean communities. Scott investigates mechanisms of inorganic carbon uptake and fixation, the evolution and ecophysiology of carbon fixation pathways, and their roles in biogeochemical cycles. These studies have applications in agriculture and carbon-neutral production of industrial precursor compounds. Employing methods including chemostat cultivation, enzymology, proteomics, transcriptomics, genetic manipulation, comparative genomics, mass spectrometry, and bioinformatics, her lab elucidates how autotrophs acquire and fix CO2, contributing substantially to global organic carbon production that enters food webs.

Scott's career at USF has produced influential contributions to microbial physiology and marine microbiology. Key publications include the genome analysis of the epsilonproteobacterial chemolithoautotroph Sulfurimonas denitrificans (Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2008), the genome of deep-sea vent chemolithoautotroph Thiomicrospira crunogena XCL-2 (PLoS Biology, 2006), characterization of form II RubisCO from Riftia pachyptila endosymbionts (2003), optimal methods for estimating kinetic isotope effects (2004), and low stable carbon isotope fractionation by coccolithophore RubisCO (2011). Earlier work includes physiological ecology of Bathymodiolus childressi at Gulf of Mexico seeps (1995) and gas hydrates breaching the sea floor (1994). She has earned the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award and STEM Scholar Teaching Award. As Co-Editor-in-Chief of FEMS Microbes, Scott advances microbiology scholarship. She teaches microbial physiology, genomics, and deep-sea biology, fostering undergraduate research leading to co-authored papers, and directs the graduate program in Integrative Biology.