{"id":6332,"date":"2026-09-01T12:22:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T20:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/?post_type=profile&#038;p=6332"},"modified":"2026-09-01T12:22:54","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T20:22:54","slug":"brooke-m-carruthers","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/profile\/brooke-m-carruthers\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooke M Carruthers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I grew up in Honolulu, HI, and Spokane, WA, and received my B.S. in Molecular &amp; Cellular Biology with minors in Marine Science, Astrobiology, and French from the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. There, I investigated the evolution of nitrogenase enzymes under Dr. Bet\u00fcl Ka\u00e7ar (Carruthers et al., 2021; Garcia et al., 2023; Cuevas-Zuvir\u00eda et al., 2024) and tracked invasive plant distributions in California using hyperspectral image data under Dr. Amy Mainzer (Stork et al., 2025).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am now excited to be bridging my passions for astrobiology and conservation by studying the physiology of sea-ice algae with Dr. Jodi Young. In my graduate research, I aim to understand how these hardy algae survive in unforgiving sea-ice brines during the polar winter, how their behavior will change in response to climate change, and how they can inform us of what life could look like on the icy moons of our solar system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Outside the lab and classroom, I love to travel, hike, rock-climb, take pictures, watch cheesy sci-fi TV and movies, engage with science outreach, and play in the water (SCUBA, snorkel, swim, surf, paddle, wonder about the aquatic microbes, admire kelp, you name it!).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I grew up in Honolulu, HI, and Spokane, WA, and received my B.S. in Molecular &amp; Cellular Biology with minors&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6334,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"tags":[],"profile_types":[24],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6336,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/6332\/revisions\/6336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6332"},{"taxonomy":"profile_types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/astrobio\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_types?post=6332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}