the scipp lab (Petersen group)
Stable & Clumped Isotopes for Paleoclimate and Paleoceanography
We welcomed in the new academic year with the arrival of four new lab members and the return of many others after a summer away. Sierra hosted the whole group at her house for a potluck dinner and the weather cooperated amazingly!
The SCIPP Lab is looking to hire a full-time lab manager to oversee daily operations, train students, and run samples. Our group works in a 3-PI shared lab space that was fully renovated in 2018-2019.
Day to day responsibilities include:
Required qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in a natural science discipline such as earth science, chemistry, or environmental sciences or engineering with secondary educational knowledge in geoscience as a plus. The candidate should have experience and expertise in stable isotopic analysis of carbonate materials, diagnosing and repairing lab equipment, laboratory management, and standard lab safety protocols. The ideal candidate is organized, have a strong attention to detail, with the ability to work well with others in a shared lab space environment.
Desired Qualifications: Master’s degree and/or previous working experience with Nu Perspective + NuCarb and Thermo MAT 253 instruments and/or the clumped isotope technique.
The salary range for this position is $37,600 – $47,000. Wage will be determined based on candidate qualifications.
TO APPLY:
Please contact Prof. Petersen by email at sierravp@umich.edu. Please provide a CV and a cover letter describing relevant prior experience and/or particular reason for interest in the position (if appropriate). We will begin reviewing applications August 1, 2019, continuing until the position is filled.
The University of Michigan is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.
The SCIPP Lab has acquired a Nu Perspective + Nucarb to perform automated clumped isotope analyses (to the great happiness of everyone who has worked hours doing manual sample prep on our vacuum line). The crates arrived in Ann Arbor last week, and made it to our building today.
We had an exciting (and sometimes stressful) time welcoming our “new baby”.
At times, feet were up in the air…
(not pictured, these same feet teetering over the edge of the truck bed 4 feet off the ground, when “mama” Sierra almost had a heart attack)
…but “Midwife” Craig, our building manager, had steady hands, and with the help of many others…
…our baby girl landed safely in her new home! Waiting to be unpacked when the Nu Engineer arrives in a few weeks.
Weighing a few tons in total, mom and baby are both doing well now that all feet are safely on the ground. We still haven’t decided on a name…
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.
Sierra was interviewed about life as a (female) academic for the University of Michigan’s Association for Women in Science (AWIS) outreach website. Sierra is the faculty advisor for this amazing campus club that brings together female scientists at all levels to help foster networks, give career advice, organize outreach to local grade schools, and much more.
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.
Sierra was selected as an Honored Instructor for her Fall 2018 Introductory Oceanography class. She celebrated with student nominators and other awardees at a ceremony at the Michigan League.
Huge congratulations to Jade, who was just awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. This prestigious fellowship will cover the next three years of her graduate career and will give her the opportunity to focus on research full time for the next few years. We are so proud of her!
The SCIPP Lab/Petersen Group is very excited to welcome four new members for the coming year. Julia Kelson will arrive as a postdoc under the NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to study paleoclimate and paleohydrology using clumped and triple oxygen isotopes, in conjunction with the IsoPaleo Lab. Two incoming Masters students, Allison Curley and Heidi O’Hora, will be working on Cretaceous paleoclimate projects. Finally, undergraduate Steve Wedel will join our ranks to work on reconstructing climate during the Last Interglacial in Turks and Caicos.
Congratulations are in order to Serena, who was selected as the winner of the Earth Department’s Undergraduate Excellence Award for a senior who excels both academically and in the research sphere. This award was presented at our annual Dorr Dinner, which was broken up this year by the excitement of a tornado warning! All guests brought their plates of fancy dinner to a lower level ballroom at The Graduate while the tornado passed, then returned to the upper level for the presentation of awards.
Congrats Serena! What an accomplishment!