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
Anne Fetrow
postdoc
Anne is an NSF postdoc whose research interests focus on how signals of past climatic and environmental change are encoded in different terrestrial sedimentary archives and geochemical proxies. She is interested in how rising global temperatures and a modified hydrologic cycle may impact environments like wetlands and closed basin lakes.
At UM, she is working with an interdisciplinary team to better quantify evaporation from Mono Lake, CA using triple oxygen isotope geochemistry and hydrologic modeling. This project aims to more directly connect our understanding of the modern hydrologic system to changes in the regional hydroclimate in the recent geologic past.
Research website: http://annefetrow.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-c-fetrow-06bb5891/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zHPvzPEAAAAJ&hl=en
Axelle Gardin
postdoc
Axelle is a Fulbright Postdoc interested in African freshwater paleoecosystems. Her research mainly involves the study of tropical freshwater vertebrates (fish, turtles, crocodiles, hippos) using stable oxygen isotopes, faunal assemblage, skeletal growth, and functional anatomy. With her project, Axelle aims to build a modern reference database of triple oxygen isotopes data on modern crocodilian species. This calibration will enable the use of this technique on fossil crocodilian teeth and better understand changes in water availability in past environments.
Matthew Allen
postdoc
Matthew joined IPL in August 2024 as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow. Matthew recently completed his PhD at the University of Kansas under Dr. Marina Suarez, where he focused on proxy-based terrestrial climate reconstructions in the mid-Cretaceous Cloverly Formation in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming and Montana. With the IPL, Matthew’s work will focus on using triple oxygen isotopes from fossil mammal teeth and soil carbonates to evaluate changes in water stress across the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum terrestrial record in the Bighorn Basin.
Jada Langston
PhD student
Research interests: paleoclimate, stable isotopes, human evolution, diagenesis
Million Alemayehu Mengesha
PhD student
Million initially became part of the lab group while visiting from September 2021 - January 2022 as part of the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholars Program (UMAPS). While visiting, Million worked on developing a triple oxygen isotope record of soil carbonates from the Afar region of Ethiopia and the Turkana region in Kenya. He is continuing this work for his PhD.
Elena Lee
PhD student
Elena Lee is a PhD student who joined IPL in Fall 2023. She graduated from Swarthmore College before hopping over to the lovely but lamentably flat state of Michigan. Although she is still noodling around in an attempt to narrow down her research focus, she is broadly interested in using isotopes to understand how topography, climate, and water balance are interrelated. She hopes to explore how these past relationships can inform our understanding of modern climate change. In her abundant free time, Elena enjoys hiking, baking, knitting, and adventuring.
Fall 2024 (missing Axelle & Gio)
ALUMNI
Julia Kelson
As a postdoc in IPL Julia took the lead on an NSF-funded project, CZ17O, that is using triple oxygen isotopes to probe how soil carbonates form. This project is centered around studying soils in different ecosystems in the Western US, including at two Dryland Critical Zone Network sites. More broadly, Julia is interested in understanding how surface temperature and water availability shape terrestrial environments in modern and ancient times.
Julia started a faculty position at Indiana University in January 2024. You can find more about Julia and her work here: https://jrkelson.github.io and https://earth.indiana.edu/directory/faculty/kelson-julia.html
Kirsten Andrews
IPL technician
Kirsten was an undergrad researcher in the lab from 2020-2022 and then worked as a technician in IPL from 2022-2024. She is now in grad school!
Some more info:As an undergraduate, Kirsten 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 student tech in the lab during summer 2021 before becoming a full-time tech in 2021. For her senior thesis, Kirsten worked on the isotopic of rivers from watersheds in the western US.
Phoebe Aron
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
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.
Jessica Moerman
Dr. Jessica Moerman, (NSF postdoc at JHU and UM, 2015-2017)
Currently President & CEO at the Evangelical Environmental Network.
Nicole DeLuca
PhD student at JHU. Currently postdoc at the EPA.
Gabrielle Stephens
JHU undergrad, Class of 2016
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
Edward Kardish
JHU undergrad, Class of 2014
Zelalem Bedaso
Postdoc 2011- 2013, JHU
Assistant Professor, University of Dayton, website
Rebecca Kraft
PhD 2012, JHU
Scientist at NIST
Dissertation title: Reconstruction of Holocene and Early Eocene Terrestrial Environments Using Multiple Stable Isotope Proxies.
Sophie Lehmann
PhD 2016, JHU
Dissertation title: Studies of Carbon, Oxygen, and Strontium Isotopes in Tooth Enamel: Evaluating Paleoenvironmental Change in South Africa and Expanding the Paleoclimate Tool Kit
staff at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Emily J. Beverly
NSF postdoc at UM 2016-2018
Assistant Professor, University of Houston website
Sarah Katz
postdoc
Sarah was a PhD student from 2018-2024 and then a postdoc in the group. building paleoclimate records from lacustrine carbonates in Peru using a combination of triple oxygen isotopes and clumped isotope techniques. She is now a postdoc at Yale. Here are the links for Sarah's website and google scholar page.
Mara Page
MS thesis Aug 2020 (at UM 2018-2020)
Thesis title: The stable isotope ecology of mammals in the southern Kenyan Rift Valley