Beth Orcutt

Beth N. Orcutt is an American marine microbial biogeochemist whose research focuses on the microbial life of the ocean floor. As of 2016, she is a Senior Research Scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and Senior Scientist of the Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations [1], a Science and Technology Center [2] funded by the National Science Foundation and headquartered at the University of Southern California.

Orcutt attended the University of Georgia, obtaining a BS in 2002 and a PhD in marine sciences in 2007, supervised by Samantha Joye. She held post-doctoral positions at the University of Southern California (2007–9) under Katrina Edwards and at the Aarhus University in Denmark (2009–12) under Bo Barker Jørgensen. She joined the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in 2012. She has also been an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Southern California since 2009. She serves on the U.S. Advisory Committee for Scientific Ocean Drilling (from 2012).

In 2015, she co-led ECORD's international Atlantis Massif Serpentinization and Life expedition with Gretchen Früh-Green of ETH Zurich. This expedition successfully used deep-sea drilling to collect rock samples from the mantle of the Atlantis Massif of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and showed that they contain hydrogen and methane.