Brent Peyton - MSU

Dr. Brent Peyton, professor of chemical and biological engineering at Montana State University.

As a graduate student, Peyton first got hooked on the microbial world found in Yellowstone’s geysers. Now he studies ways to harness microbes for making biofuel, cleaning up mining pollution and perhaps recycling plastic. One of his classes deals with extreme microbiology in Yellowstone.

Recently, Peyton has worked with other MSU scientists to look for microbes growing on pieces of plastic litter found in Yellowstone's hot springs. The scientists believe there could be microbes naturally adapted to eat plastic in the hot conditions that also help to break plastic down.

Before joining the MSU faculty, he spent five years with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory cleaning up contamination, such as the nuclear waste at the Hanford site in Washington state.

Peyton is a professor on the faculty of the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department, and the NSF Center for Biofilm Engineering. He is the director of MSU’s Thermal Biology Institute.