STUDENTS AND POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS
Graduate Students
Yi Ge Zhang
Yige earned his B.S. in Geochemistry at Nanjing University in 2007, followed by a M.S. in Marine Sciences from the University of Georgia in 2009. He's interested in not only using geochemistry as proxies to reconstruct paleoclimate, but also how the biogeochemical cycling of gases (CO2, CH4, etc) and elements (Ca, Fe, etc) interacts with the climate system. He's interested in climate changes from the timescale of tectonic to millennial as well, primarily in the Cenozoic. Current research projects involve Miocene climate reconstructions from both marine and terrestrial records.
Srinath earned his B.E in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Madras in 2004, followed by a M.S. in Atmospheric Chemistry from North Carolina State University in 2007. His interests currently lie in using compound-specific organic proxies to study hydrological cycle changes during warming events. Rapid hyperthermal events during the Eocene, including the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), ELMO and X-Event, are being evaluated using IODP/ODP cores and continental outcrops.
Courtney Warren
Investigating the character of climate change during the global warmth of the Pliocene
Peter earned his B.A. in geology from Pomona College in 2005. He is currently developing a project to use biomarker and compound specific isotope proxies to constrain late Holocene hydrological variability in Central America and its effect on the Maya Civilization. Field work in Mexico and Guatemala is an important component of this project. He is also working on reconstructing temperature and hydrologic change during the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum in Antarctica. In general he is interested in the intersection of climate change, hydrology and vegetation dynamics, as well as the effects of Quaternary climatic change on human societies.
Sitindra Dirghangi
Studying the biosynthetic hydrogen isotope fractionation of specific lipids for various eubacteria, protozoa, and archaea.
PAST STUDENTS AND POSTDOCS
Michael was a Bateman Postdoctoral Fellow (2007-Present). He earned his B.A. and M.S. in Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College, followed by his Ph.D from Stanford University in 2007. His research at Yale was focused on applying compound specific stable isotopes and organic molecular temperature proxies to reconstruct the paleoclimate and paleoelevation of the Sierra Nevada and Western U.S. He is currently a postdoc at the University of Michigan.
Brett earned his B.S. in Geological Sciences from Indiana University in 2003. His Ph.D. was broadly focused on understanding the response of terrestrial plants to climate using plant-specific biomarkers and isotopic signatures. Research includes a variety of temporal and spatial scales and includes reconstructing the history of C4 photosynthesis, environmental controls on hydrogen and carbon isotope compositions of leaf waxes, and climate during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. He completed his Ph.D. in 2009 an is currently a postdoctoral research in forensic applications of stable isotopes with Jim Ehleringer and Thure Cerling at the University of Utah.
Kate French
Kate was an Undergraduate Researcher and chemistry major who turned her attention toward geochemistry. Her senior thesis required her to travel to Italy to collect sediments that span a period of rapid global warming in the middle Eocene ~45 million years ago. The goal of her research is to reconstruct the character of sea-surface temperatures during warming, using a technique based on archaeal membrane lipids (glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers). She has been accepted to the graduate program at MIT/WHOI, but will first spend a year in Bremen, Germany working with Albert Benthien and supported by a Fulbright Fellowship
Zhonghui Liu
Zhonghui received his Ph.D from Brown University and was a Bateman Postdoctoral Researcher between 2006-2008. Part of his work focused on carbon dioxide and temperature reconstruction for the past 5 million years with particular attention on the global warmth of the early Pliocene. Another project evaluated temperature and carbon dioxide records across the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition ~34 million years ago.
He now is a faculty member at Hong Kong University.
Nikolai received his Ph.D. from Penn State University and was a Bateman Postdoctoral Fellow between 2004-2006. His efforts at Yale included evaluating the isotopic composition of leaf wax biomarkers at an experimental set-up in Eastern Washington State, USA and Arctic hydrological conditions during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
He is now a Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia.
Steve received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and was a Gaylord Donnelley Environmental Postdoctoral Fellow between 2003-2005. He has broad research interests that span the mechanisms of climate change, the controls on the global carbon cycle, and the measurement of geologic time (geochronology). At Yale, Steve focused on establishing spatial patterns of climate change related to the North Atlantic Oscillation using tree ring data and a variety of advanced spectral methods.
Meyers is now a professor at the University of North Carolina
Sara Enders
Sara was an Undergraduate Researcher and is now finishing her Masters in Forestry at Yale. Her research, published in Limnology and Oceanography, required her to travel to Colorado and sample high alpine lake sediments in the Rocky Mountain National Park in order to evaluate changes in nutrient supply related to regional climate changes over the past 50 years. This work applied three compound-specific isotope systems to determine changes in nitrate, lichen growth rates, and hydrology.
David Zinniker
David Zinniker received his Ph.D from Stanford University and was a Gaylord Donnelley Environmental Postdoctoral Fellow between 2006-2008. He is an organic geochemist with interests in terrestrial biogeochemistry and petroleum geology. While at Yale, David Zinniker studied biomarker distributions and isotopic compositions of pack rat middens in the southwest USA.
