Category: Sierra Petersen

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To Bermuda and Beyond!

Sierra and Jade spent ~ a week in Bermuda in early May collecting fossil shells and water samples towards Jade’s PhD research, recently funded by NSF! We were joined by Ian Winkelstern, a UM alum and colleague. We visited >10 locations, many undescribed and undated in the literature and brought home ~45 lbs of fossils and rocks (with only a minor customs snafu involving an apple). These fossils will be analyzed for their clumped and stable isotopic composition at bulk and subannual timescales to reconstruct Bermudan mean climate and seasonality during the last interglacial period (and possibly during older interglacials as well, pending dating of some outcrops)!

 

The highlight of the trip was our last day of field work, which we did via kayak. We visited uninhabited small islands in the Great Bay of Bermuda and found so many fossil bivalves!! We were very excited! It’s amazing that this counts as work!

 

Jade is already asking when we can go back.

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SCIPP Lab Represents at MGU

Earth Scientists of UM gathered today for the annual Michigan Geophysical Union (MGU) Research Symposium. There were over 70 posters presented in two sessions, with 50 from the Earth department. Out of these, 5 posters were from our group – 10% of all Earth department posters! (and an even higher % of the undergraduate poster presenters – wow!).

Jade, Serena, Jon, Becca, and Tianna all did a great job presenting. Our very own Serena won the Best Undergraduate Poster award! Congratulations Serena!

Matt and Sierra contributed too by judging student posters and giving feedback.

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Sierra wins the Crosby Award!!

We are excited to announce that Sierra was selected as a recipient of the UM Crosby Research Award this year! The money from this award will go towards supporting planned field work in Bermuda in April/May, where Sierra and Jade (with collaborator Ian Winkelstern) will be collecting fossil shells from previous interglacial intervals.

Here at UM, we are lucky to be at an institution with a commitment to supporting their female and junior faculty, and the Crosby Award is a perfect example of the type of program that makes life just a little bit easier for a young female PI. Thank you ADVANCE program for this award!

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7th International Clumped Isotope Workshop: We’re on a boat!

The curving hallways running the length of the ship. Disorienting!

Jade and Sierra attended the 7th International Clumped Isotope Workshop in Long Beach, California this past weekend. All attendees stayed aboard the historic Queen Mary (a Titanic-era cruise liner that has been permanently parked and turned into a hotel). We heard lots of great talks/posters and caught up with colleagues (including lab visitors Ryan Venturelli and Robin Dawson who visited us in the fall). Sierra gave a talk on the community-wide project to update published clumped isotope calibration data to the new “Brand parameters” (paper in revision) and a poster on calibrating the clumped isotope paleothermometer in modern gastropods (with Becca and Serena as coauthors!). A real group effort! Jade particularly enjoyed the poster session and meeting graduate students from other groups. A very invigorating meeting!

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Petersen Group comes up big at Dorr Dinner 2018

Petersen group members came up big at the annual Earth and Environmental Sciences Department Dorr Awards Dinner. Kyle Meyer received the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award and Serena Scholz won the Department Award for Academic Excellence. Sierra got to present the award to Serena. We were all very proud!!