Sophie Obersteiner is a PhD student researching tree-microbe interaction under the supervision of Dr. Tamir Klein in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Weizmann Institute. She has a BSc in Biology from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in Germany and an MSc in Desert Studies from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. 

In her PhD work, Sophie investigates how root exudates influence the rhizosphere community assembly under various climate conditions, such as drought and elevated CO2. The unique setup of a rain-exclusion field experiment located in the Judean forest of Israel enables her to study the effect of a drying climate scenario on the below-ground in a complex forest ecosystem. She has quantified the below-ground carbon allocation in the form of root exudates, and how it works on linking the exudates with the bacterial communities inhabiting the root. She is currently examining the effect of the predicted elevation of atmospheric CO2 on the rhizosphere in climate-controlled growth chambers.