[3] She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Oceanography from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography with a dissertation titled "Biogeochemical applications of compound-specific radiocarbon analysis"[4] for which she received MIT's Rossby Award.
She was the first woman in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department to be appointed to a tenured position.
[6][7] Pearson's recent work has focused on the global carbon and nitrogen cycles, paleo-temperatures, and paleo-CO2 records.
In 2010, Pearson described her research as "...the 'you are what you eat' philosophy for microbes" which allows her to use their chemical and isotopic fingerprints to assess modern and ancient ecosystems.
[2] Notable research topics include investigations into chemoautotrophic processes using compound specific 14C-based methods,[8][9] genomic evidence of sterol biosynthesis retained by Planctomycetota,[10] and examinations of modern environments to reveal insights into environmental conditions in the past.