Naomi E. Levin
Associate Professor, Associate Chair for Graduate Studies
Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Program in the Environment
Research Interests: ecosystem and landscape responses to climate change; triple oxygen isotope geochemistry; plant-animal-climate interactions; isotope hydrology; environmental context for human evolution; paleoclimate proxy development; rift basin evolution. Naomi's CV
Julia Kelson
NSF postdoc
Julia uses clumped and triple oxygen isotopes of soil carbonates to understand past climate changed in terrestrial ecosystems. She is especially interested in how Cenozoic greenhouse climates can inform us of modern climate change. She is taking the lead on the newly funded NSF project, CZ17O, to use triple oxygen isotopes to probe how soil carbonates form.
https://jrkelson.github.io
Sarah Katz
PhD student
Research interests: water budgets in the Peruvian Andes using triple oxygen isotopes, building paleoclimate records from lacustrine carbonates in Peru using a combination of triple oxygen isotopes and clumped isotope techniques.
Jada Langston
MS student
Research interests: paleoclimate, stable isotopes, human evolution, diagenesis
Million Alemayehu Mengesha
Visiting Scholar
Million is a lecturer at Addis Ababa University and visiting the lab from September 2021 - January 2022 as part of the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholars Program (UMAPS). While visiting, Million is working on developing a triple oxygen isotope record of soil carbonates from the Afar region of Ethiopia and the Turkana region in Kenya.
Kirsten Andrews
Undergraduate
Kirsten is an undergraduate research assistant who started working with PhD student Sarah Katz the university’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). This initial work included a project to measure carbon and oxygen isotopes in chicken egg shells from the Ann Arbor area to study how the isotopic composition of precipitation and groundwater are incorporated into the carbonate of the egg shells. She then started working as a tech in the lab during summer 2021 and is now working on her senior thesis on the isotopic of rivers from watersheds in the western US.
ISOPALEOLAB GROUP see more lab pics on instagram and also see a more complete listing of people in the lab on the Isopaleolab website: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/isopaleolab/
ALUMNI
Phoebe Aron – Postdoctoral Research Fellow
paron@umich.edu
Phoebe was a post-doc working with Chris Poulsen and in the IPL. She got her PhD from UM in 2020 and leads our crowdsource water project. Phoebe’s research focuses on water cycling in the Andes mountains, ecohydrology at the UM Biological Station, and triple oxygen isotopes in the hydrosphere. She started as a principal scientist at Hazen and Sawyer in 2021.
Elise Pelletier – undergraduate
Elise worked an undergraduate student in the lab and graduated in December 2020 with a double major in Earth and Environmental Sciences and Environmental Studies and a double minor in Chemistry and Food and the Environment. Her research interests include isotope hydrology, climate change, food systems, and agroecology. She was very involved with the University of Michigan Campus Farm and intends to pursue a career in agricultural sciences.
Honors Thesis title: Variability of Meteoric Water Isotopes in the Great Lakes Region. She started work for the non-profit Seven Generations Ahead in 2021.
Mara Page, MS thesis Aug 2020 (at UM 2018-2020)
Thesis title: The stable isotope ecology of mammals in the southern Kenyan Rift Valley
Emily Beverly (NSF postdoc at UM 2016-2018)
Assistant Professor, University of Houston
Dr. Jessica Moerman, (NSF postdoc at JHU and UM, 2015-2017)
AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, Department of Energy
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Dr. Sophie Lehmann (PhD 2016, JHU)
postdoc in Earth Systems Science Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Dissertation title: Studies of Carbon, Oxygen, and Strontium Isotopes in Tooth Enamel: Evaluating Paleoenvironmental Change in South Africa and Expanding the Paleoclimate Tool Kit
Nikki DeLuca (PhD student 2014 – present, JHU)
Gabrielle Stephens (JHU undergrad, Class of 2016)
Dr. Shuning Li (PhD 2015, JHU)
faculty at Peking University
Dissertation Title: Triple Oxygen Isotope Distributions in Meteoric Waters, Plant Waters and Laboratory Precipitated Calcite.
Eric Ryberg (JHU undergrad, Class of 2015)
Postdoc at MIT
Edward Kardish (JHU undergrad, Class of 2014)
Dr. Zelalem Bedaso (Postdoc 2011- 2013, JHU)
Assistant Professor, University of Dayton
Dr. Rebecca Kraft (PhD 2012, JHU)
Scientist at NIST
Dissertation title: Reconstruction of Holocene and Early Eocene Terrestrial Environments Using Multiple Stable Isotope Proxies.