Rate My Professor Laibin Huang

Laibin Huang, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Saint Louis University, where he joined as new faculty in fall 2023. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Florida. Huang is a microbiologist whose research focuses on Microbial Ecology, employing classical techniques such as qPCR, amplicon sequencing, and isotopes, alongside state-of-the-art omics approaches including metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and metabolomics, as well as bioinformatic tools like high-performance computing, Python, Snakemake, and R. His work lies at the intersection of Microbial Ecology, Bioinformatics, and Soil Science, aiming to understand how microorganisms drive and sustain ecosystem functions amid global changes driven by human activities and climate shifts. Key themes include community ecology of soil microbiomes—examining assembly, adaptation, resistance, and resilience to environmental disturbances—and microbial controls on nitrogen cycling, revealing how soil microbiomes regulate nitrogen transformations to influence soil fertility and health. Huang teaches courses such as BIOL 4640 General Microbiology and BIOL 4160 Microbial Ecology. His research has secured external funding, including a $240,000 NASA grant as principal investigator for the AD ASTRA consortium, developing closed-loop biological systems for space life support by optimizing microbial communities in anaerobic digestion for carbon and nitrogen transformations. Saint Louis University also supported his work through the New Faculty Startup Fund.

Huang's publications appear in high-impact journals, with representative works including 'Microbiota recovery in a chronosequences of impoverished Cerrado soils with biosolids applications' (Science of The Total Environment, 2024), 'Microbial resistance and resilience in response to environmental changes under the higher intensity of human activities than global average level' (Global Change Biology, 2020, highlighted in Ecology, Environment & Conservation), 'Ammonia-oxidizing archaea are integral to nitrogen cycling in a highly fertile agricultural soil' (ISME Communications, 2021, selected as best of 2021), and 'Molecular and Dual-Isotopic Profiling of the Microbial Controls on Nitrogen Leaching in Agricultural Soils under Managed Aquifer Recharge' (Environmental Science & Technology, 2023). Other notable papers cover depth-dependent metagenome-assembled genomes in agricultural soils (Scientific Data, 2025), nitrogen and phosphorus acquisition strategies in archaeal lineages (ISME Journal, 2023), and Campylobacterota dominance in tropical karst estuaries (Environmental Microbiology, 2021, highlighted in News of Science). These contributions advance understanding of microbial dynamics in ecosystems.