L'Oréal USA has awarded one of five 2025 For Women in Science grants to Caltech's Georgia Squyres, a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of Dianne Newman, Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology and Merkin Institute Professor.
Squyres investigates the complex world of bacterial communities, specifically biofilms. Biofilms are found in nearly every environment on Earth and have dominated the history of life on our planet. These communities often see bacteria taking on specialized roles to execute intricate group tasks. Squyres employs advanced microscopy techniques to observe these biofilms in real time, meticulously documenting where, when, how, and why cells in the biofilm perform their designated functions. Controlling bacterial biofilms is an urgent medical need—biofilm infections contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. A clearer sense of how biofilms work could also build a deeper understanding of our planet and lead to new methods for agriculture and industry.
"Historically, we have often studied bacteria as single cells," Squyres explains. "But it turns out that, in nature, bacteria mostly live in big dense communities that we call biofilms, and they behave very differently than they would alone. They start to work together, and each cell takes on specialized jobs at specific locations within the biofilm at specific times. We want to understand how this is organized so that we can intervene if we wanted to, for example, treat a bacterial infection."
Squyres completed her undergraduate degree at Columbia University, where she majored in biophysics and first began to study biofilms. During her PhD at Harvard, Squyres worked to develop techniques for microscopy and data analysis in bacteria. She joined Newman's laboratory as a postdoc in 2021. Recently, Squyres led a study to image complete biofilm development at high resolution and in real time, and to understand how biofilm cells pattern themselves to build the gooey matrix between them.
"Receiving the L'Oreal fellowship is fitting recognition for Georgia," says Newman. "She is an immensely talented young scientist who is doing very high-quality creative research. In addition, she is a wonderful role model for her peers and lifts up every community she joins."
At Caltech, Squyres also sings in an a cappella octet called OcTech.
"I'm a math/music person," she says. "I think the thing that unites those is a sense of order or elegance, the idea that you can start with a simple language, the notes that you can play on an instrument, and these can be arranged and rearranged to create beautiful complexity. The unifying thread for me has always been seeing something that is beautiful and complicated, and coming to understand how it is composed by small, simple rules that then elaborate themselves."