Andrew Babbin endeavors to travel lightly for work assignments. In addition to his travel necessities, he also packs a roll of electrical tape, duct tape, lab tape, a set of cable ties, and several bungee cords.
“It’s my MacGyver kit: You never know when you’ll need to create a quick fix in the field or mend a broken bag,” Babbin states.
Babbin’s travels take him far offshore, on month-long voyages, where he conducts water sampling along the Pacific coast and in the open ocean. In isolated areas, repair supplies frequently prove useful, as when Babbin had to attach a wrench to a sampling device with a zip tie to enable it to sink through a freezing Antarctic lake.
Babbin is an oceanographer and marine biogeochemist who investigates marine microbes and how they influence the nitrogen cycle between the ocean and the atmosphere. This exchange is vital for sustaining healthy ocean ecosystems and enhancing the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon.
By integrating ocean measurements with experiments in his MIT laboratory, Babbin aims to decipher the relationships between microbes and oceanic nitrogen, which could subsequently assist scientists in discovering methods to preserve the health and productivity of the ocean. His research has led him to numerous coastal and open-ocean regions across the globe.
“You truly become an oceanographer and an Earth scientist in order to experience the world,” remarks Babbin, who recently achieved tenure as the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “We celebrate the diversity of places and cultures on this planet. Experiencing even a small portion of that is remarkable.”
A significant cycle
The ocean has been an enduring element in Babbin’s life since he was a child. His family hails from Monmouth County, New Jersey, where he and his twin sister grew up enjoying the Jersey shore. During their teenage years, their parents took them on family cruise getaways.
“I have always adored being on the water,” he shares. “My favorite moments of those cruises were the days spent at sea, where you found yourself in the middle of an ocean basin surrounded by water.”
During his education, Babbin leaned towards the sciences, particularly chemistry. Following high school, he enrolled at Columbia University, where a visit to the Earth and environmental engineering department ignited a realization.
“For me, it was always about the thrill of water and chemistry, and it was like a spark of, ‘Oh wow, I don’t have to choose one over the other,’” Babbin explains.
He opted to major in Earth and environmental engineering, focusing on water resources and climate challenges. After graduating in 2008, Babbin returned to New Jersey, where he attended Princeton University and charted a path toward a PhD in geosciences, concentrating on chemical oceanography and environmental microbiology. His advisor, oceanographer Bess Ward, welcomed Babbin to her research group and invited him on multiple month-long cruises to varied areas of the eastern tropical Pacific.
“I vividly recall that first journey,” Babbin reminisces. “It was chaotic. Everyone else had vast experience at sea, loading the vessel and securing everything, and I was lost. Within a few hours, I found myself conducting an experiment as the ship swayed back and forth!”
Babbin acquired the skills to deploy sampling canisters overboard, retrieve them, and assess the seawater samples for signs of nitrogen — a vital nutrient for all life on Earth.
It turns out that organisms relying on nitrogen for survival cannot absorb it directly from the atmosphere. They need a sort of intermediary, in the form of microbes that “fix” nitrogen, transforming it from nitrogen gas into more usable forms. In the ocean, this nitrogen fixation is carried out by specialized microbial species, facilitating nitrogen availability to phytoplankton — microscopic plant-like organisms that are foundational to the marine food web. Phytoplankton also serve as a primary means through which the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Microorganisms might also utilize these biologically accessible forms of nitrogen for energy under specific circumstances, reintroducing nitrogen back into the atmosphere. These microbes can additionally release nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas that can also stimulate ozone depletion in the stratosphere.
Through his graduate studies, both at sea and in the lab, Babbin became captivated by the nitrogen cycle and the role nitrogen-fixing microbes play in sustaining ocean ecosystems and the climate overall. A balance of nitrogen inputs and outputs is essential for supporting phytoplankton and sustaining the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.
“Some of the most pressing inquiries in ocean biogeochemistry relate to this nitrogen cycle,” Babbin states. “Comprehending the mechanisms through which this element cycles within the ocean, and its significance to ecosystem vitality and global climate, has proven to be immensely impactful.”
In the laboratory and out at sea
Upon completing his PhD in 2014, Babbin joined MIT as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“My initial impression upon arriving here was, wow, this really is a playground for geeks,” Babbin remarks. “I cherished being part of a culture that strives to deepen our understanding of the world, while also engaging in pursuits we are truly passionate about.”
In 2017, he accepted a faculty role in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. He established his laboratory, decorated in his favorite vibrant orange shade, on the top floor of the Green Building.
His team employs 3D printing technology to create microfluidic devices that simulate oceanic conditions to explore microbe metabolism and its impact on marine chemistry. In the field, Babbin has led research missions to the Galapagos Islands and various locations in the eastern Pacific, where he has collected and evaluated air and water samples for evidence of nitrogen transformations and microbial activity. His newly established measuring station in the Galapagos can infer marine nitrous oxide emissions across a broad region of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. His team has also journeyed to southern Cuba to study microbial interactions within coral reefs.
Most recently, Babbin visited Antarctica, where he set up camp adjacent to frozen lakes and extracted samples of pristine ice water that he will examine for genetic traces of ancient microbes. Such preserved bacterial DNA could shed light on how microbes evolved and impacted the Earth’s climate over billions of years.
“Microbes are the terraformers,” Babbin emphasizes. “They have been, since life emerged more than 3 billion years ago. We must consider how they shape the natural world and how they will react to the Anthropocene as humans alter the planet.”
Collaborative efforts
Babbin is now exploring new research avenues. Aside from his at-sea and laboratory endeavors, he is branching into engineering with a new initiative to create denitrifying capsules. While nitrogen is a crucial nutrient for sustaining a marine ecosystem, excessive nitrogen, such as from fertilizer runoff into lakes and rivers, can provoke harmful algal blooms. Babbin seeks to develop eco-friendly capsules that eliminate surplus anthropogenic nitrogen from local water bodies.
He is also initiating the design of a new sensor to measure low-oxygen levels in the ocean. As the planet heats up, oceans are depleting oxygen, producing “dead zones” where fish struggle to survive. While others, including Babbin, have attempted to map these oxygen minimum zones, or OMZs, they have done so intermittently by deploying sensors in the ocean at limited ranges, depths, and times. Babbin’s sensors could yield a more comprehensive map of OMZs by being installed on wide-ranging, deep-diving, and self-propelled vehicles: sharks.
“We aim to measure oxygen. Sharks require oxygen. If you examine the areas where sharks are absent, you could gain insights into where oxygen is lacking,” Babbin explains, as he collaborates with marine biologists on tagging sharks with oxygen sensors. “Many of these large pelagic fish frequently traverse the water column, allowing us to map their dive depths and infer behavioral patterns. I propose that you might also deduce something about the ocean’s chemistry.”
When contemplating what inspires new concepts and research paths, Babbin attributes much to collaboration, both within his team and across MIT.
“My most insightful ideas come from this collective effort,” Babbin states. “Especially since we all come from diverse backgrounds and view challenges from various angles.”
He is infusing this collaborative ethos into his new position as a mission director for MIT’s Climate Project. Alongside Jesse Kroll, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and chemical engineering, Babbin co-leads one of the six missions: Restoring the Atmosphere, Protecting the Land and Oceans. Babbin and Kroll are organizing several workshops on campus, aimed at fostering new connections and igniting fresh ideas, particularly concerning methods to evaluate the effectiveness of various climate mitigation strategies and better gauge climate impacts on society.
“One area we aim to promote is contemplating climate science and climate interventions as intertwined elements,” Babbin notes. “There is a wealth of initiatives striving for transformation. However, we want those actions to be the most effective. Because we truly have one opportunity to address this. Time is crucial.”