Noella Marcellino
American Benedictine nun, scientist
Mother Noella Marcellino, O.S.B., (born Martha A. Marcellino; June 30, 1951) is an American Benedictine nun who has earned a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Connecticut. Studying fungi in France on a Fulbright Scholarship, she concentrated on the positive effects of decay and putrefaction as well as the odors and flavors of cheese.
Biography
Marcellino dropped out of Sarah Lawrence College. The Archbishop of Hartford, John Whealon, gave permission for members of the cloistered community of Benedictine nuns of Abbey of Regina Laudis to embark on a pilgrimage for higher education. In December 1986, Marcellino and three other nuns applied and were accepted into courses for Agricultural Science at the University of Connecticut.
In 1987 the group began a program in scholarship that resulted in all receiving doctoral degrees; Marcellino's was in molecular and cell biology/microbiology. She began with introductory sciences courses at The University of Connecticut's campus in Waterbury, but it was during a visit by UCONN organic chemistry professor Nina Stein to the abbey's cheese cellar, that the professor suggested that she focus her research on the microbiology of cheese ripening.
She won a Fulbright scholarship to France to collect and examine native strains of fungi, with an emphasis on Geotrichum candidum, from traditional cheese caves and stayed an additional three years, analyzing the samples on a grant from the French government.
Mother Noella used to not be able to eat cheese, except for the occasional chunk of smoked cheddar and had been making cheese in a wooden whiskey barrel since 1977.
She is a member of the Abbey of Regina Laudis.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7047307. VIAF identifies the subject as 61358120. The Library of Congress control number is no2008093184. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1986, 1987 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Noella Marcellino” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.