Dr Krista Sumby is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine. She is currently part of a project looking at “Past, Present and Future Drivers of Soil Change” utilising her expertise in microbial ecology and molecular biology. Dr Sumby is working to identify microorganisms in Australian soil samples (the soil microbiome) collected regularly over the past two decades to see if changes in farming systems have led to changes in soil microbial communities. The results will likely lead to recommendations for farming practices to encourage the most beneficial microbial communities. The potential benefits of farming with a greater reliance on the soil biota (rather than external inputs) include healthy soil for crop plants to thrive and in return produce more consistent food and a reduced carbon footprint.Dr Sumby has over fifteen years of scientific research experience and has worked on several molecular and microbiology-based projects. She completed an MSc in Microbiology at the University of Canterbury leading to work in the dairy industry on microbial genetic projects. Dr Sumby completed a PhD in Wine Microbiology in 2013, working on bacterial enzymes involved in flavour production in wine, before further work in wine microbiology and microbial ecology isolating and identifying yeast and bacteria from the environment. Dr Sumby was most recently a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Australian Research Council Training Centre for Innovative Wine Production at The University of Adelaide (2017-2022) investigating vine and grape attributes that favour particular yeast species.