People

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.

Click here for CV.

Cick here for ORCID

Click here for Google Scholar

Alex Quizon

Graduate Student (PhD)

Alex is a 4th year PhD candidate working on calibrating the clumped isotope paleothermometer in modern marine gastropods. He 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. Alex is a recipient of the prestigious NSF GRFP.

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 4th 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. Lucas has also had a chance to do a lot of undergraduate mentoring, as the SCIPP Lab has involved 6 undergraduates in this research so far, with more on the way.

Outside of the lab, Lucas plays soccer and is getting into tea drinking.

Adriana Brown

Graduate Student (PhD)

Adriana is a 2nd year PhD student in the SCIPP Lab. She is 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.

Erin Kim

Graduate Student (MS)

Erin is a 1st year masters student in the SCIPP Lab. She will be working on reconstructing climate during the Plio-Pleistocene in the Carolinas and Virginia. This work parallels Lucas’s work down in Florida.

Cecilie Phillips

Undergraduate

Cecilie is senior 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.

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.

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)

Allison N. Curley

PhD student 2019-2024

Post-lab positions: Postdoctoral research fellow with Dr. Jens Fiebig at Goethe University in Germany

Jade Z. Zhang

PhD student 2018-2023 (NSF GRFP, Rackham Merit Fellow), Postdoc 2023

Post-lab positions: Hydrologist at the USGS Carribean-Florida Water Data Science Center in Davie, FL

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 through UM’s CUGS program

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)

Daniel Wilson

Undergraduate Researcher, 2023-2024

Post-Lab position: UTEP Ramp Roads gap-year program

Darya Lollos

Undergraduate Researcher, 2022-2024, Senior Thesis 2024

Samantha Davies

Undergraduate Researcher, UROP program 2021-2022, Senior Thesis 2024

Post-Lab position: PhD student at Cornell University

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