People

Laura C. Motta earned a Chemistry degree from Rutgers University in 2013, where she conducted her first mercury experiments with marine phytoplankton in John Reinfelder’s lab. She then pursued a double Ph.D. at the University of Michigan—one in Environmental Sciences with Joel Blum, focusing on marine mercury stable isotope biogeochemistry, and in Theoretical Chemistry with Paul Zimmerman, in relativistic quantum chemistry to understand heavy element chemistry. After completing her Ph.D. in 2019, she moved to South Korea to work with Sae Yun Kwon at POSTECH, studying mercury in zooplankton. She later became a postdoctoral fellow with Jochen Autschbach at SUNY Buffalo, where she worked on relativistic quantum chemistry to explore the chemical bonding of organometallic compounds.

Since 2023, she has been at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where she leads the Theoretical Chemistry and Isotope Biogeochemistry Lab. Her research focuses on advancing our fundamental understanding of chemistry, inspired by our oceans.