Andrew Babbin

Research Interests: Professor Andrew Babbin is a marine biogeochemist studying the interactions of microbial communities with their chemical environment to understand climate. His research group studies how microbes (bacteria!) shape Earth’s climate by controlling greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They do this by sailing across the planet, performing high precision experiments in the Bablab! (a laboratory at MIT), and contextualizing the observations with numerical models and theory. Their ultimate aim is to reveal the mechanisms behind how the oceans regulate global climate. From this knowledge, the hope is to enable society to make better predictions and adopt new practices in face of a changing planet.

Biographical Sketch: Professor Babbin joined the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science (EAPS) faculty in 2017. After earning a bachelor’s in Earth and environmental engineering, with a minor in applied mathematics, from Columbia University in 2008, Babbin went on to complete doctoral studies in geoscience at Princeton University in 2014. Prior to joining the EAPS faculty, Babbin came to MIT as an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 2014-2016. In 2024, Babbin was appointed as a mission co-director for the MIT Climate Project Mission: Restoring the Atmosphere, Protecting the Land and Oceans. The Climate Project is an Institute-wide effort to focus MIT’s strengths on six broad climate-related mission areas, with the goal to change the trajectory of global climate outcomes for the better over the next decade.