Dr. Tripti Bhattacharya – Principal Investigator
Dr. Bhattacharya received her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied paleoclimate and climate dynamics. Her subsequent postdoctoral research at the University of Arizona focused on the response of the North American Monsoon, to climate change. Her current work focuses on midlatitude circulations in past warm climates, Earth system feedbacks, and hydroclimate dynamics. She is a Sloan Foundation Fellow and has won an NSF CAREER Award. She has recently been awarded the rank of associate professor, and holds a Thonis Family Professorship
Dr. Tiffany Napier – Research Scientist
Dr. Tiffany Napier works on high resolution biomarker records of marine heat waves, upwelling, and drought in the Pacific Ocean. She is pioneering new methods to look at seasonal and subseasonal processes in high-resolution sediment cores. Dr. Napier receives her PhD in 2017 from the University of Michigan, and completed a three-year postdoctoral position at MARUM-Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany
Dr. David Fastovich – Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. David Fastovich comes to us from University of Wisconsin Madison, where he received his PhD in August 2022. He is interested in proxy reconstruction, abrupt climate change, and the interface between paleoecology and paleoclimatology. He is working on reconstructions of the Walker Circulation during greenhouse climate intervals. Check out his website here:
Allie Thompson – PhD Student
Allie received her Masters at Western Washington University, and is a first year PhD student at Syracuse University. She will be working on Last Interglacial (Eemian) records of hydroclimate, fire, and vegetation from arid regions.
Claire Rubbelke – PhD Candidate
Claire is a first year PhD student interested in modern and paleoclimate dynamics. She received a triple major in geology, geography, and atmospheric and oceanic sciences from UW Madison in 2020. She is currently working on leaf wax hydrogen isotope reconstructions of Pliocene monsoons, focusing on Southern Africa.
Tyler Logie – PhD Student
Tyler is an organic geochemist working on applying isotopes to questions of deep time carbon cycling as well as Cretaceous hydroclimate. He is co-advised with Chris Junium.
Steph Bullinger – Laboratory Manager
Steph Bullinger received her MS from Georgia Tech, and began her position in the lab in April 2022. She is a wizard with our hydrogen gas generator as well as the DI water system, and continually applies her industry experience with gas chromatography. Simply put, nothing in the lab would work without her.
Lucy Weisbeck – Undergraduate Researcher
Lucy comes to us from SUNY ESF, across the path. She has worked in several labs on topics ranging from fish conservation to geochemistry, and is passionate about environmental conservation. She plans to attend graduate school in the near future
Former Members
Peter R. Brennan – PhD
Peter received his BS from Boston College in Environmental Geosciences in 2017. For his PhD, Peter focused on understanding the causes of high SSTs along the coast of North America in the mid-Pliocene, and the consequences of these temperatures for hydroclimate. He is currently seeking a position in environmental data science
https://peterbrennanclimate.com/project/external-project/
Ellen Jorgensen – Undergraduate Researcher
Ellen was an undergraduate researcher who did an honors thesis in the lab. She received a BS in Earth Sciences with distinction, along with a minor in Physics, in Spring 2023. She was a NOAA Hollings Scholar and Goldwater Scholar. She is current pursuing a PhD at Brown University
Kia Lynn Riccio – Graduate Researcher
Kia is a graduate student in archaeology, using organic geochemical analyses of ceramic residues to understand dietary changes in the Caribbean and Central America in archaeological contexts