Nuttapon (Nat) Pombubpa (started in the lab in Fall 2015) graduated in 2021 and was a Plant Pathology graduate student working on desert fungal diversity, biological crusts, and microbiome research. Nat was supported by a Royal Thai Government fellowship. He was also awarded a Joshua Tree Foundation research award to study microbial diversity of biological crusts in disturbed and undisturbed areas of the park.
Nat passed his qualifying exam in May 2017 and his thesis project focused on using amplicon and metagenome approaches to study the microbial diversity of crusts in Joshua Tree National Park. He received a Joshua Tree Robert Lee Research Fellowship to perform some of this work. He taught in several workshops on biological crusts.
He is currently a lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.