Sierra Victoria Petersen
Principle Investigator
Sierra received her undergraduate degree from Caltech (Geochemistry) and her Masters/PhD from Harvard (Earth & Planetary Sciences), before coming to University of Michigan, first as a postdoc then a faculty member.
Outside of the lab, she enjoys easy-yet-delicious baking projects (aka cake mixes), beach vacations, running on dirt roads, and sharing her passion for the outdoors with her kids. She tries to keep a healthy work-life balance and encourages the same in her group members.
Jade Z. Zhang
Postdoctoral Researcher
Jade completed her PhD thesis in the SCIPP Lab and defended in July 2023. During her time as a graduate student, she was a recipient of both the Rackham Merit Fellowship and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP). Her first project involved reconstructing Interglacial climate in Bermuda at the subannual scale by applying the clumped isotope paleothermometer to gastropod fossils at high-resolution (Zhang et al., 2021). She is now expanding this work to bivalve fossils from another site in Bermuda, work which is still in progress. To ground-truth these paleoclimate studies, Jade first calibrated the clumped isotope paleothermometer in modern specimens of the same bivalve species (Zhang and Petersen, 2023). She is also investigating modern variability in the oxygen isotopic composition of seawater around Bermuda and along the US East Coast to put her paleoceanographic results into better context. In Fall 2022, she completed an internship at the USGS Carribean-Florida Water Data Science Center in Davie, FL through the NSF INTERN program and hopes to continue this type of work after graduation.
Outside of the lab, Jade is our resident baking and desert-making expert and we are always excited when she brings delicious treats to the lab to share (obviously not IN the lab though).
Allison N. Curley
Graduate Student (PhD)
Allison joined the group in Summer 2019 as a master’s student. In 2021, she officially switched from the master’s to the PhD track and we could not be more thrilled!
Allison started out using clumped isotopes and strontium isotopes to study freshwater inputs to the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway. After interruptions to new data collection due to the COVID shutdown of our lab, Allison pivoted to investigate and redefine “vital effects” in bivalves (Curley et al., 2023). With new isotope tools (D47, D48), we are now able to distinguish between different causes of isotopic offsets from expected equilibrium values in shell carbonate. In particular, she found that differences in the isotopic composition of the outer and inner layer of bivalves shells are a reflection of their physiology. The fact that this physiology proxy is recorded in long-lasting archives (fossil shells) opens up many possible applications for paleotology, paleoclimate and more that Allison is now pursuing. She will be working on these projects at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. during the 2023-2024 academic year, supported by the Smithsonian Institute Predoctoral Fellowship.
Besides the lab, the kitchen is her favorite place to run experiments. She also enjoys hiking, kayaking, weaving, and watching bad movies.
Alex Quizon
Graduate Student (PhD)
Alex is a 3rd year PhD candidate and was recently awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (Congrats Alex!). He is working on calibrating the clumped isotope paleothermometer in modern marine gastropods and has found some species that are faithful recorders of environmental conditions and others that display vital effects of various magnitudes and directions. In a second project, he is reconstructing Last Interglacial climate and seasonality up and down the US East Coast using sclerochronology in the clam Mercenaria. Together with graduate student Lucas Gomes, he is exploring the modern variation in d18Owater along the East Coast as a basis against which to interpret his paleo-d18Owater results.
Outside of the lab, Alex enjoys engaging with music in various capacities (e.g. piano, songwriting/production, theater), listening to podcasts about current events, and exploring different kinds of TV shows and video games.
Lucas Gomes
Graduate Student (PhD)
Lucas is a 3rd year PhD candidate and recipient of the Rackham Merit Fellowship. His thesis focuses on reconstructing Plio-Pleistocene climate on the shallow Florida platform using sclerochronology and clumped isotopes. He is exploring and documenting new fossil sites, combining skills in sedimentology/stratigraphy and isotope geochemistry to produce a holistic picture of the evolution of this unique paleoenvironment. These climate records will be connected to extinction patterns to better understand the regional Plio-Pleistocene molluscan extinction. As an undergraduate, he worked on comparing and aligning climate records across the 8.2 kyr event with Professor Jim Russel at Brown University.
Outside of the lab, Lucas plays soccer and is getting into tea drinking.
Adriana Brown
Graduate Student (PhD)
Adriana is a 1st year PhD student in the SCIPP Lab. She will be working on reconstructing the temperature and d18Owater evolution of the Western Interior Seaway through the Cretaceous period using clumped isotopes of (mostly) oyster fossils.
Outside of the lab, Adriana can often be found biking, reading Terry Pratchett, or religiously doing the New York Times crossword.
Cecilie Phillips
Undergraduate
Cecilie is junior who has been part of the lab since her freshman year, when she joined through the UROP program. She is working with PhD student Alex Quizon to investigate growth shut off temperatures in the clam Mercenaria and how that shut off temperature may change in different mean climate states (MIS 5e vs MIS 5a vs today).
Outside of the lab, she spends a lot of time crocheting stuffed animals, clothes, and blankets and also enjoys hiking, climbing, and other outdoor activities.
Samantha Davies
Undergraduate
Samantha is a senior who joined the group through the UROP program during her sophomore year. She is working on reconstructing past ocean temperatures in the Late Cretaceous and Paleogene using clumped isotopes of fossil mollusks from a multiple Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary sections in the Gulf Coastal Plain, including two newly documented sites. She spent the Winter 2023 semester at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. through the “Michigan in Washington” program, digitizing the Sohl fossil collections and selecting samples for her thesis project. She is now writing up this impressive dataset as her senior thesis and hopefully a first-author publication.
Outside of the lab she likes to hike, paint, and watch bad reality TV.
Darya Lollos
Undergraduate
Darya is a senior, working with PhD student Allison Curley to complete a senior thesis. Her thesis project focuses on biologically derived isotopic fractionations (BioDIFs) in bivalves, specifically, whether the direction and magnitude of BioDIFs within a given genera are consistent across climatological gradients.
Eric Waters
Undergraduate
Eric is a junior in the SCIPP Lab and yet another successful UROP student who stayed on in the lab beyond the first year. He is working with PhD student Lucas Gomes to quantify predation in Plio-Pleistocene units from central Florida and investigate the spacing of ornamental ridges on the bivalve Chione sp.
Outside of the lab he likes going on hikes, thrift shopping, and involving himself in music (whether that be performing, listening, or going to shows).
Jon Portinga
Undergraduate
Jon is a junior who joined the lab as part of the FA23 cohort. He is producing subannual climate records from fossil scallops collected at our newest sites in Florida.
Outside of the lab, Jon likes to hike, climb, and play any kind of sport.
Daniel Wilson
Undergraduate
Daniel is a junior who joined the lab as part of the FA23 cohort. He is working on constructing growth curves in fossil Mercenaria to qualitatively reconstruct climate and living conditions through time in Plio-Pleistocene Florida.
Kailey Koshorek
Undergraduate
Kailey is a junior who joined the lab as part of the FA23 cohort. She is working on constructing growth curves in fossil Mercenaria to qualitatively reconstruct climate and living conditions through time in Plio-Pleistocene Florida.
Outside of the lab, Kailey likes to play basketball and volleyball, read, go on hikes and spend time with her friends.
Yunhan Fang
Undergraduate
Yunhan is a freshman who joined the lab as part of the FA23 cohort via the UROP program. He is working on grain size analysis and a broad taxa survey using straigraphically-collected bulk samples from one of our newest Pleistocene sites in Florida.
Outside of the lab, Yunhan likes to play soccer and the drum kit, read poetry, and he’s beginning to take up fencing.
Alexandra (Zandra) Curley
Undergraduate
Not to be confused with Allison Curley, Zandra is a freshman who joined the lab as part of the FA23 cohort via the UROP program. She is working on grain size analysis and a broad taxa survey using straigraphically-collected bulk samples from another one of our newest Pleistocene sites in Florida.
Justin VanDeVelde
Lab Manager
Justin joined the SCIPP Lab in Spring 2022, bringing a wealth of isotope and lab manager experience to the group. He has since proved to be indispensable.
Outside of the lab, Justin enjoys hiking and scuba diving!
Alumni Members (Grad/Postdoc)
Julia R. Kelson
Postdoc 2019-2021, NSF PRF
Post-lab positions: Postdoctoral fellow in the IsoPaleo Lab here at UM, starting faculty position at Indiana University in 2024
You can find Julia’s personal webpage here: https://jrkelson.github.io/ OR Click here for Julia’s Google Scholar page
Matthew M. Jones
Postdoc 2019-2021
Post-lab positions: Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., then Research Geologist at the USGS Geology, Energy, and Minerals Science Center, Reston, VA
Click here for Matt’s personal webpage or his Google Scholar page
Heidi O’Hora
Master’s Student 2019-2021
Post-lab positions: senior grant administrative associate at UT Austin Computer Sciences Department
Serena Scholz (now Serena Yang)
Master’s Student 2019-2020
Undergraduate Researcher, 2016-2019
Post-lab positions: CNA Institute for Public Research, currently working towards a PhD in climate science at Yale
Kyle Meyer
PhD Student, 2014-2018
Post-lab positions: Postdoc at Portland State University
Alumni Members (Undergrad)
Benjamin Woodmansee
Undergraduate Researcher, UROP program, 2022-2023
Sabrina Lanker
Undergraduate Researcher, UROP program, 2021-2022
Manmeet Singh
Undergraduate Researcher, UROP program, 2021-2022
Jon Hoffman
Undergraduate Researcher, 2018-2021, Senior Thesis 2021
Post-lab positions: PhD student at AMNH
Steve Wedel
Undergraduate Researcher, 2019-2020, Senior Thesis 2020
Post-lab positions: MS at UT Austin in Earth and Energy Resources
Ziwei Xiang
Undergraduate Researcher, 2019-2020
Rebecca Heaman
Undergraduate Researcher, UROP program, 2018-2019
Tiana Kilgore
Undergraduate Researcher, UROP program, 2018-2019
Liz Oliphant
Undergraduate Researcher 2016-2018, Senior Thesis 2018
Post-lab positions: Fulbright fellowship to Indonesia, MS program at Oxford (UK)
Alumni Members (Other)
Ashling Neary
Lab Manager 2019-2022
Alberto Aguilar Martinez
Lab Technician, 2018