Javier Izquierdo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Hofstra University. He earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2007 where he was first introduced to the field of soil microbial ecology. He went on to Dartmouth College to study the microbial ecology of thermophilic cellulose degradation. He has also worked in the private sector in the fields of environmental consulting and bioenergy. His research group at Hofstra currently studies plant-microbiome interactions that benefit the health of the plant host, and microbial cellulose conversion to bioproducts. He is a member of the American Society for Microbiology, the Society for Industrial Microbiology and technology and the Ecological Society of America.