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Noha Mesbah

Robert C. Anderson Memorial Award 2009

Noha Mesbah, a microbiologist who will soon be on faculty at Suez Canal University in Egypt, studies how some living micoorganisms survive, even thrive, in extreme environments—in particular, those that exhibit concomitantly high-temperature, high-salt, and high-pH. She has developed innovative approaches for isolating and characterizing a number of novel microbial species representing a novel family and order. Characterizing the physiological processes of these polyextremophiles may one day help to find life in extraterrestrial locales. Mesbah has already published four peer-reviewed articles and is first author on three of four peer-reviewed journal papers derived from this work. She will be first author on at least two more and coauthor on two other manuscripts now in preparation.