I am extremely happy to announce that Asst. Prof. Dr. Laura Meredith is the recipient of the 2022 Thomas Hilker Award for her exceptional work connecting the atmospheric science and molecular biology communities to elucidate fundamental questions on ecosystem function using an exciting and creative fusion of high-resolution atmospheric trace gas measurement techniques with metagenomic and metatranscriptomic measurement and modeling. I first met Dr. Meredith in San Francisco at AGU’s Fall Meeting 2015, where she was discussing results from her prestigious National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to investigate the links between CO18O and COS gas exchange from a range of soils and biomes at Stanford University. During this fellowship, Dr. Meredith brought together a range of biogeochemical approaches and collaborators to estimate the abundance and diversity of a family of enzymes, the carbonic anhydrases, between different soils and biomes for the first time and how they related to soil-atmosphere gas exchange. Since then, Dr. Meredith has moved on to establish her own research group (https://www.laurameredith.com/) at the University of Arizona where she continues to develop her expertise in sophisticated state-of-the-art gas exchange measurements of trace gases and microbial genomics to develop novel insights into biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem function. In particular, Dr. Meredith stepped into a leadership position within the community by becoming director of the Biosphere 2 Tropical Rain Forest facility. In this role, Dr. Meredith impressively coordinated a large-scale rain forest manipulation experiment at Biosphere 2 with over 90 participants from 14 institutions and five countries to investigate the role of drought on the exchange of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) and trace gases from tropical plants and their rhizosphere communities. Throughout the 5-month campaign, she demonstrated her impressive leadership capacity, which is outstanding for an earlier career scientist. This unique whole-ecosystem 13CO2 and deep-water labeling experiment comprehensively addressed fundamental small-scale processes all the way up to integrated ecosystem fluxes, linking metabolism to ecosystem function. For all these reasons, all her letter writers agree that Dr. Meredith is an outstanding early-career scientist who has made significant contributions to the field of biogeosciences that are worthy of recognition by the AGU Thomas Hilker Early Career Award. —Lisa Wingate, French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE), Paris

I am honored to receive the Thomas Hilker Award. It is humbling to become one of the esteemed recipients of this award, which memorializes the contributions of Thomas Hilker to diverse research topics in the biogeosciences. Biogeosciences is not where I started, but it is where I have found my home. As a graduate student of atmospheric chemistry, I was astounded by the sensitivity of the global atmosphere to the terrestrial microbiome. Excitingly, many questions persist on the role of soil microbes in biosphere-atmosphere exchange, and rapid advances in genomics and trace gas detection open new opportunities for integration. It has been my goal to build understanding and tools at this interdisciplinary frontier by connecting the atmospheric science and molecular biology communities. I am deeply grateful to mentors for their guidance along my academic journey, including Paula Welander, Tanja Bosak, and Colleen Hansel, who supported my first steps in microbiology, and my nominators, Lisa Wingate, Steve Wofsy, Scott Saleska, Christiane Werner, and Brendan Bohannan, who model excellence in the biogeosciences. To my collaborators who are as eager to teach through research as they are to learn, I thank you for creating space to grow and take new directions. I would like to thank Christiane Werner and S. Nemiah Ladd, my coleads of the Biosphere 2 Water, Atmosphere and Life Dynamics rain forest drought campaign, and the entire campaign team for their skill, tenacity, and positivity. I am grateful to the University of Arizona and Biosphere 2 for institutional support. Finally, I thank the talented members of my group for their research and mentoring contributions. I am particularly grateful for undergraduate and high school researchers whose trust, curiosity, and enthusiasm never fail to revitalize my zeal for the research process. I am proud to be a part of the field of biogeosciences for its embrace of diverse approaches to answering critical questions for our global future, and I am deeply grateful for your support and for honoring me with the Thomas Hilker Award. —Laura Meredith, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Tucson