Gigi Pistilli graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 2026 with a B.S. in Chemistry (Biochemistry Track) and a minor in Environmental Science and Engineering. She worked under Alex Sessions and Victoria Orphan (Caltech) investigating how salinity inhibits methanogenesis and respiration in mixed microbial communities for applications in microbial biomass-based carbon sequestration, as well as delivering peptide immune elicitors to crops using protein based nanoparticles (Gözde Demirer, Caltech) and engineering microbial storage in model rhizospheres (José Dinneny, Stanford University and Christopher Dundas, UGA). Gigi is entering the IQBio program to develop quantitative skills and methods to answer questions in environmental microbiology and microbial physiology.
