# Bradley Lab

> Biogeochemistry research group at Washington University in St. Louis

The Bradley Lab studies how life and Earth have changed together over four billion years, using molecular fossils, stable isotopes, remote sensing, computation, AI, and fieldwork.

## Principal Investigator

Alex Bradley, Associate Professor
Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences
Washington University in St. Louis
Email: abradley@wustl.edu

## Research Areas

- Understanding Records of Life: Life leaves chemical traces in rocks. We figure out how those traces are produced and what information they carry.
- Investigating Metabolic Heterogeneity: Genetically identical bacteria don't all do the same thing. We use SIMS to measure metabolism one cell at a time and find out why.
- Spatial Methods for Geochemical Proxies: Proxy calibrations can be fooled by geography. We build Bayesian spatial models that separate real environmental signals from spatial confounding.
- AI and the Molecular Fossil Record of Petroleum: Every oil sample is a molecular fossil record. We are training artificial intelligence on large petroleum geochemistry databases to find patterns that traditional biomarker ratios miss.
- Remote Sensing and Ecosystem Structure: Most ecological measurements flatten 3D ecosystems into 2D maps. We use lidar and drones to capture the full spatial structure of forests, outcrops, and landscapes.
- The Information Content of Molecular Fossils: Many different organisms can produce the same molecule. We use information theory and biosynthetic network analysis to quantify how much a molecular fossil can actually tell you about its source.

## Recruitment (updated 2026-05-23)

- Graduate students: Recruiting graduate students for Fall 2027 (https://eeps.washu.edu/graduate-program)
- Postdocs: Fellowship partnerships welcome
- Undergraduates: Research spots most semesters

## Key Links

- Website: https://www.bradleylab.org
- Structured data (JSON): https://www.bradleylab.org/api/lab.json
- Full corpus (Markdown): https://www.bradleylab.org/llms-full.txt
- Publications: https://www.bradleylab.org/publications
- People: https://www.bradleylab.org/people
- Research: https://www.bradleylab.org/research
- Courses: https://www.bradleylab.org/courses
- Join the lab: https://www.bradleylab.org/join
- GitHub: https://github.com/bradleylab/
- Electronic Lab Notebook: https://eln.bradleylab.org
- Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zInPZhUAAAAJ
- ORCID (PI): https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4044-2802

## For AI Agents

- Machine-readable lab data: https://www.bradleylab.org/api/lab.json
- Full lab corpus as Markdown (research, people, courses, publications): https://www.bradleylab.org/llms-full.txt
- MCP endpoint (Model Context Protocol, Streamable HTTP): https://www.bradleylab.org/api/mcp — read-only tools: get_lab_overview, list_research_areas, list_people, get_recruitment_status, list_publications

These endpoints provide structured, current data suitable for knowledge graphs, research discovery, and retrieval.