Jennifer Martiny is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. She received her B.S. in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution at UC San Diego and her Ph.D. at Stanford University. Her research aims to uncover fundamental principles of the generation and maintenance of diversity in microbial communities. To do this, she brings together perspectives from microbiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Viruses, and specifically bacteriophage, are an important mechanism by which microbial diversity can be maintained. The Martiny lab is studying how antagonistic coevolution between bacteriophage and their hosts can drive the diversification and coexistence of bacterial diversity in the marine environment and, in collaboration with the Whiteson lab, in the human gut.