Dr. Alison Gould is a Research Scientist at the California Academy of Sciences studying the critical, yet complex, relationships between marine organisms and bacteria. Her research primarily focuses on bioluminescent symbiosis between fish in the Siphamia genus and luminous bacteria in the vibrio family. This highly specific and tractable vertebrate-bacteria association is providing new insights into the mechanisms that regulate the formation and maintenance of microbial symbiosis from an evolutionary scale down to the molecular level.