Christian Rinke is an ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics (ACE), University of Queensland, Australia.

His research interests include the phylogeny, taxonomy and ecology of free living and symbiotic bacteria and archaea. He focuses on the majority of microbes which elude current culturing efforts. This so-called “Microbial Dark Matter” can only be explored with culture-independent approaches, and Chris has pioneered several methods.

Currently, the Rinke lab uses a range of “omics” techniques to investigate bacterial plastic degradation, describe microbial and viral communities in coastal waterways such as the Brisbane River, explore microbial compositions in shallow coastal and deep-sea subsurface sediments, characterise insect microbiomes, and to identify the main players in terrestrial hot springs.