I grew up in Jerusalem, Israel, the older of three children. In the last six years before moving to the US for my postdoc, I lived with my family in Kibbutz Kabri in northern Israel, where we recently became full members.

I grew up in a family where science was a part of our life, as several of my immediate family members were scientists. Growing up, I was active in a youth organization that focused on outdoor activities, and I spent many days hiking and studying Israel’s nature. Before I started school, I lived for three years in Sde Boker in the Negev Desert, working as a professional hiking guide. During these years I spent countless hours wandering around the seemingly empty desert and was always amazed by how such a barren landscape holds such a rich abundance of flora, fauna, and human activity from the past and the present. The time there strengthened my understanding that humans are dependent on nature in all aspects, and how much we still must learn about it.

After graduating from my bachelor’s program, I wanted to continue with graduate studies and knew that the Weizmann Institute offers a very competitive program. Specifically, I was drawn to the rotation program which allows students to choose three different labs to work in for the first year, in any department of the Institute. This allowed me to rotate in a lab in the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, even though I was in the Life Sciences track, and I ended up graduating in this lab.

In my PhD I developed novel theoretical models of microbes that produce methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse that on Earth is primarily generated by microbes. The models that I developed link between the microbes’ metabolism and the chemical fingerprint of the methane that they generate, which could help to better distinguish between different sources and sinks of methane in the environment. In my postdoctoral research I still work on methanogenic microorganisms (“methanogens”), but I am now doing experimental and analytical work in addition to the theoretical modeling. Specifically, I am using a methanogen that we can genetically modify, which is not trivial in these organisms that belong to the domain Archaea. We use high resolution mass spectrometry to analyze the isotopic composition of the methane that these methanogens produce to understand the molecular mechanisms that control the isotopic composition of methane in the environment.

I was interested in joining a community of fellow Weizmann scientists who are broadly interested in environmental and sustainability research. While my research is related to these topics, in my day-to-day research I did not get to see the “big picture”, and most of my time was dedicated to mundane tasks or small details. In the IES Fellow meetings we would discuss our research and also anything related to environment and sustainability that we were interested in. It also gave us the chance to meet new people who share our passion.

As an IES Fellow I was exposed to many problems and possible solutions that people are working on in environmental and sustainability research, and this has helped gain a better understanding of how to direct my own research to be more relevant. In addition, I met many new friends who share my interests, some of whom I am still in contact with today, and this gives me a sense of connection to Weizmann even after graduation, which is not trivial.

I plan to come back to Israel after my postdoctoral research will be concluded and to start an independent research group in an Israeli university that will focus on the interactions between microbes and their environments. I want to bring back to Israel some new tools and methods that are currently not available, such as high-resolution mass spectrometry for methane and H2 and genetic modifications of anaerobic Archaea.

I also have a strong interest in starting or joining a company that is tackling climate change, and to my delight, several companies like that are now active in Israel. I hope that in the next few years investors and entrepreneurs will see that we need to act – quickly, to solve the climate crisis and I hope I can contribute to this effort by harnessing microbes that have been shaping Earth’s climate for eons past.

I would say the strong points of WIS and IES are the sense of community. I feel that WIS is my home, and I really enjoyed working there. There are so many talented people around, most of them super friendly, and the administration seems to be in our favor, which is not always the case at other institutes. The science was great, and there were many opportunities to collaborate and exchange knowledge inside and outside the department.

Specifically for my research topic, at my postdoc I have all the facilities that I need inhouse and there are a lot of people that work on similar topics that I can engage with. In Israel, there were only a handful of people that did similar research to mine. In some ways it was a good thing though, since it made us reach out to people outside of Israel and to collaborate with them – collaborations that are still ongoing today.

Jonathan Gropp did his undergraduate studies in Tel-Hai college in northern Israel, in the Biotechnology track. He then went to the Weizmann Institute of Science where he did his Masters in the Life Sciences track and PhD in the Chemical Sciences track under the supervision of Prof. Itay Halevy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. In his PhD he developed novel theoretical models of microbes that produce methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse that on Earth is primarily generated by microbes. The models he developed link between the microbes’ metabolism and the chemical fingerprint of the methane that they generate, which could help to better distinguish between different sources and sinks of methane in the environment. During his PhD he received awards for presentations (IAAS Meeting, 2017; MicroEco2 meeting, 2021), and at the end of his PhD, he received a full two-year postdoctoral fellowship from the European Molecular Biology Association (EMBO) and an award from the IES (Next-gen Environmental Sustainability postdoc award). During his PhD he also co-organized a seminar series for microecology (“MicroEco”), co-organized a student-led conference for Earth and Planetary Sciences (“EPScon”), and was a fellow in the SAERI program between 2018-2022.