Staff Directory

My research focuses on using geochemical proxy evidence preserved in marine sediments to reconstruct past climatic and ecological conditions to better understand natural drivers of climate and ecosystem variability on timescales of hundreds to millions of years. I am particularly interested in West Africa where I generate records of the concentrations, molecular distributions and isotopic compositions of organic biomarkers and extraterrestrial ³He-normalized dust fluxes from marine sediment archives to study changes in the paleohydrology, paleoecology and fire history of the West African monsoon region across multiple Earth system boundary conditions

I am a Bridge to Ph.D. Scholar with INSPIRE and Columbia Engineering School and graduated from Gettysburg College in 2022 with a B.S. in Environmental Studies, a double minor in Writing and Data Science, and some concentrations in Environmental Science, GIS, Spatial Analysis, Marine and Freshwater Ecology, and Wildlife and Conservation Biology. I am working with Jennifer Middleton on her research using hydrothermal ³He as a tracer to characterize trace element and isotope (TEI) fluxes and processes associated with hydrothermal circulation in the South Pacific using samples collected from the GEOTRACES GP17-OCE expedition.

Kelly graduated from Columbia with a B.A. in Environmental Chemistry with a premedical concentration in May 2020. Kelly worked in the WINGs lab for her senior thesis and her research focused on ice rafted debris in the Southern Ocean and measuring elemental fluxes in marine sediment cores to generate records of biologic productivity during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Thesis title: Ice Rafted Debris, Climate Drivers, and the Southern Ocean.

Kelly is now studying medicine at Avalon University.

Jordan completed his PhD in the WINGs lab in Summer 2021. His work spanned the fields of geology, paleoclimatology, and archaeology using a combination of geochemical techniques and modeling. Jordans graduate worked investigated a variety of questions including: What was atmospheric circulation like during a warmer-than-present world? How did the land, ocean, and atmosphere interact over the last 5 million years? Can we identify new feedbacks between the climate system and ever-changing landscapes? How and when did humans begin to domesticate animals?

Dissertation Title: Earth, Wind, and Water: Plio-Pleistocene Climate Evolution in East Asia and the North Pacific

Jordan is now an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona.

I am an isotope geochemist who uses noble gas analyses and complementary geochemical tracers seawater and in the geologic record to evaluate interactions between the oceans, atmsophere, ice sheets, and solid Earth over a range of modern and past climatic conditions.

I am a geomorphologist and geochemist with interests in polar surface processes. My research focuses on the mechanisms and rates of rock breakdown in extreme, hyper-arid environments like Antarctica, and the fluctuations of ice sheets and alpine glaciers. I employ a combination of field-based methods (acoustic emission monitoring, micrometeorological monitoring) and numerical methods to determine the processes responsible for rock weathering in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. I use cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating techniques to determine rock erosion rates, and to date glacial deposits in Antarctica and the Arctic. My primary cosmogenic tool is the noble gas He-3, but I also make use of the radioisotopes C-14, Be-10, Al-26, and Cl-36. I began at LDEO as a postdoc in 2016, and am currently at Associate Research Scientist.

My research interests include paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, and geochemistry. I am primarily interested in using dust proxies (in addition to major and trace elements, and U/Th isotopes) from North Pacific Ocean sediment cores to reconstruct the strength and latitudinal shift of the westerlies over the last glacial cycle. Westerly winds are important to study because they play a critical role in the global climate. Additionally, studying past warm period conditions is helpful in understanding future warming forced by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

I am a Professor of Climate at the Climate School and a member of the Geochemistry Division at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

I am a climate scientist, and my current research focus is on the interplay of climate change, the carbon cycle and aerosols. As an environmental physicist and isotope geochemist I use elemental and isotopic analyses (noble gases, U-Th series, cosmogenic and radiogenic isotopes), to unravel processes of climate and environmental change in the oceans and on continents, on timescales ranging from decades to tens of millions of years. My research uses climate archives such as deep-sea sediments, lake sediments and polar ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. My group’s reconstructions of past climates contribute to understanding the climate system’s sensitivity to natural variability and anthropogenic perturbations.

In 2019, I co-led a 2-month expedition on the international drill ship Joides Resolution to the Southern Ocean to study the role of the Southern Ocean and the ocean’s most powerful current, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, in the global climate system and how an improved understanding of the Southern Ocean processes can help us tackle the climate crisis.

I am passionate about mentoring graduate students and postdocs, and I am a recent recipient of the LDEO Excellence in Mentoring Award. I teach in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and serve as the ‘Climate Scientist in Residence’ at Columbia’s Journalism School.

I am engaged in the JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) space. In 2020/2021, I served as the co-chair of the Lamont Diversity Equity and Inclusion Task Force, and co-taught a gradation student-initiated seminar on Climate Change, Race and Environmental Justice.   

I serve on the Advisory Council of the Climate Museum where I am engaged in science communication and outreach, and supporting active engagement with the climate emergency.

I am a first-year PhD student advised by Dr. Gisela Winckler and Dr. Jennifer Middleton. I am interested in understanding the mechanisms which drive past and present global climate change through harnessing geochemistry to construct paleoclimatic records. Presently I am reconstructing dust flux records in the Southern Ocean during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Prior to studying at Columbia I received a Sc.B. from Brown University, where I studied Quaternary tropical terrestrial paleoclimate.

I am a first-year PhD student with Professor Gisela Winckler. I use U/Th isotopes to reconstruct records of dust fluxes during the last interglacial to investigate atmospheric circulation during warmer-than-present periods of the earth’s past. Previously, I received my Bachelor of Science in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT in 2023 and my MPhil in Earth Sciences as a Gates-Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge in 2024. My master's thesis paired paleoclimate, geochemistry, and archaeology to reconstruct a high-resolution terrestrial paleoclimate record of the Common Era. I am passionate about policy-actionable science and museum-based learning.

I am an atmospheric scientist/chemist interested in how atmospheric composition and aerosols, such as dust and smoke, affect past and present climate.

I am currently a physical scientist at the U.S. EPA’s Office of Research and Development working on a range of projects, including Integrated Science Assessments for criteria pollutants that are used to drive agency decisions on the National Ambient Air Quality Standards under the Clean Air Act.

I am a senior at Barnard studying Environmental Science and Theatre. I am currently researching iceberg transits during the late Pliocene using ice-rafted debris from a sediment core drilled in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean. Bridging my interests in oceanography, paleoclimatology, and collaborative practices, this study examines ice-rafted debris measurements alongside a conglomerate of proxies to develop our understanding of the rich environmental history in the Southern Ocean.