People
Gabe Bowen
email
personal page
bio
As a native of Michigan’s Peninsula and graduate of the University of Michigan (B.S. in Geology, 1999), returning to the Midwest after completing a Ph.D. (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, Earth Sciences, 2003) and postdoc (University of Utah, Dept. of Biology, 2004-2005) in the western half of the United States has been something of a homecoming. I do miss the rocks, deserts, and mountains, though. So I feel fortunate to work in a field that allows me to stay in touch with these places and at the same time get to know more about the landscapes and ecosystems of my new home state!
As my list of previous affiliations implies, my research interests span the fields of biology and geology, and this is reflected in the ongoing and developing research projects in my group at Purdue. In short, I am interested in humankind’s impact on Earth’s environment, particularly those that promise to have immediate and important consequences for our continued survival and comfort as Earth-dwellers. The wide-ranging, large-scale changes we are causing in the global water cycle represent one such set of impacts, and have developed as a central theme in many of my research projects. This work focuses on (1) understanding natural environmental change, through study of the geological record, as a baseline or analogue for human-induced changes, and (2) observation and modeling of the current state of the environment and changes therein. Members of my lab group apply a range of tools in our research, the primary ones being light stable isotope ratio analysis, geochemical modeling, and GIS.
[Gabe’s CV]
Hilary Schafer
(Head Technician)
email
bio
Hilary Schafer is a graduate student at Purdue University, working towards a Masters Degree in Speech Language Pathology. She received her B.A degree in Philosophy from Christendom College in Front Royal, VA. Although she was new to the whole ‘isotope’ thing when she started, Hilary has quickly assimilated lab know-how and is now the go-to person for keeping the lab running smoothly and the mass spectrometer fed with samples.
Postdocs
Postdoc position available in isotope hydrology and forensics
Graduate Students
Kristine Nielson
email
bio
Kristine is a graduate student in the Earth and Atmospheric sciences department at Purdue University . She recieved a B.S. in Geology from Caltech and an M.S. in Geology from Penn State. Her master's research, conducted with Kate Freeman and Chuck Fisher, focused on the sulfur stable isotope geochemistry and lipid geochemistry of sediments associated with vestimentiferan tubeworms in the Gulf of Mexico . She is currently working on paleoclimate reconstruction of the Great Salt Lake and is especially interested in molecular biomarkers and their use as proxies for environmental variables like temperature, salinity, and precipitation.
Justin VanDeVelde
email
bio
Justin is a graduate student at Purdue University in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, studying towards an Ph.D. degree. He received a B.S. in geology from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. He is especially interested in the use of stable isotopes as proxies in climate and ecological reconstructions, and is currently working on multi-substrate paleoenvironmental reconstruction in the Lake Flagstaff paleo-basin of central Utah.
Clement Bataille
email
bio
Clement is a graduate student at Purdue University in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, studying towards an Ph.D. degree. He received a B.S. in agronomy and a M.S in hydrology/hydrochemistry from the Institut National Polytechnique - Toulouse . He is especially interested in the use of stable isotopes as proxies in climate and ecological reconstructions, and is currently working on paleoenvironemental reconstruction in the Bighorn Basin.
Bianca Maibauer
email
bio
Bianca is a graduate student at Purdue University in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, studying towards a M.S. degree. She received a B.S. in geological sciences from the University of Florida. She is currently working on paleoenvironmental, paleoecological, and paleo-pCO2 reconstructions based on analysis of organic and carbonate sediments in the Bighorn Basin. She is especially interested in the use of stable isotopes as proxies in climate and ecological reconstructions.
Undergraduates
Vishnu Srinivasaraghavan
email
bio
Vishnu Srinivasaraghavan is a junior in the undergraduate geology program. He has gained quite an interest in paleoclimate research and has been working with carbonate isotope analysis in the lab since spring, 2010. Most recently he had the opportunity spend a month in the field with Justin and Clement in Wyoming and Utah. He is working on a project to assess controls of isotopic variability within Eocene paleosols in northern Wyoming, and hopes to use his research experience to further his exploration of paleoclimate and other areas in geology before he graduates.
Juliana Newman
Juliana is a student in the Jefferson High School Science Research Class and is working with our group on pedogenic carbonates from the Bighorn Basin Coring Project cores.
Former IREH lab personnel
Aya Schneider-Mor (postdoc 2007-2009)
Current position: Postdoc, Stanford University
Casey Kennedy (postdoc 2008-2011)
Current position: Research Hydrologist, USDA
Zhongfang Liu (postdoc 2009-2011)
Current position: Research Faculty, Tianjin Normal University
Jeremy Stalker (postdoc 2010-2011)
Current position: Assistant Professor, Jacksonville University
