Ruth Ley received a BA in Integrative Biology from the University of California at Berkeley and worked for 3 years on the Big Island of Hawaii on plant ecosystem processes. Her graduate work at the University of Colorado at Boulder with Dr. Steven Schmidt focused on the microbial processing of atmospheric nitrogen by soil microbes in high altitude talus soils. She received a National Research Council NASA Astrobiology Fellowship to work on the microbial diversity of hypersaline microbial mats with Dr. Norm Pace. She then moved to Washington University School of Medicine to work with Dr. Jeffrey Gordon on the human microbiome. In 2008 Ley joined the Department of Microbiology at Cornell University as an Assistant Professor. Her awards include a Packard Fellowship, a Hartwell Fellowship, a Beckman Fellowship, and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.