Nicole Dubilier is a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany where she heads the Symbiosis Department. Her lab studies the diversity, ecology and evolution of symbioses between microorganisms and marine invertebrates from environments such as deep-sea hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, as well as shallow-water coral reefs and seagrass meadows. Using a wide array of methods ranging from single gene analyses to omics, whole organism physiology and in-situ experimental work, Dubilier and her team have revealed how beneficial interactions with microorganisms allow animals to thrive in nutrient poor environments.
Dubilier moved from the USA to Germany as a teenager and gained her PhD in Marine Zoology at the University of Hamburg, Germany. After a two year postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, she joined the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in 1997. Dubilier's awards and honors include the Leibniz Prize (Germany's most prestigious research prize), a Gordon and Betty Moore Marine Microbial Initiative Investigator Award, and a European Research Council Advanced Grant. She is an elected Fellow of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the American Academy of Microbiology, the European Academy of Microbiology, and the Academy of Sciences and Humanities Hamburg, and was the President of the International Society of Microbial Ecology (2020-2022). She serves on many national and international advisory boards, scientific councils and other commissions of trust, and is engaged in advancing gender equity in science.