Paleoclimatologist | Paleoceanographer | Isotope Geochemist

I am the Student Engagement Lead and a Research Assistant Professor in the Marine and Coastal Science (MACS) program at Western Washington University (WWU). In my role at WWU, I split my time between advising prospective MACS students and teaching MACS courses. In addition, I maintain an active research program in the field of paleoclimatology. I received my PhD in 2020 from Iowa State University and was a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) before starting my current position at WWU.

My research interests lie in reconstructing late Holocene ocean conditions on a high-resolution time scale using marine climate proxies. By investigating oceanic natural variability as well as the role that the oceans have played in our climate system, we can put recent climatic changes into context and better predict future climate scenarios. Much of my research thus far has focused on using isotopes in Arctica islandica shells to reconstruct centuries long changes in ocean conditions. A. islandica are the longest-living, non-colonial animal  known and precipitate their shells in annual increments. As such, they provide hundreds of years worth of annually-resolved climate data through both the width of their annual increments as well as the chemistry of their shells. More recently, I have started using fully-coupled, global climate model simulations to help analyze our isotope records in the context of large-scale ocean dynamics.