Current Lab Members

Lab Alumni

Collaborators

Lab Alumni

Sarah was a NOAA postdoc in my group from 2006-2008 working on D/H ratios of leafwax compounds as a paleoproxy for environmental water and climate in arid terrestrial environments. She is now an Assistant Professor at USC.

Ben was the first high-school intern to work in my lab, and worked with us from 2005 to 2008. During that time, he constructed an annual record of changes in leaf-wax D/H ratios from the San Gabriel Mountains.

Sky was a geobiology graduate student from 2003-2007, working first in Dianne Newman's group and later splitting his time between our two groups. His research involved the production and function of methylated hopanoids by the anoxygenic phototrophic bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris. To our great dismay, Sky passed away on August 25, 2007. We will forever mourne his loss.

Magnus was a postdoc in my group from 2004-2006, and laboratory manager from 2006-2007. He worked on a variety of projects here at Caltech, most notably the development of the SWiM (spooling wire microcombustion) interface for carbon-isotopic analysis of involatile organic matter. Magnus is currently working with Willi Brandt at MPI in Jena, Germany.

Chao was a postdoc in my group from 2004-2007, and worked extensively on compound-specific D/H measurements of sedimentary organic compounds from the Santa Barbara Basin. In April, 2007 he moved to U.C. Riverside where he is currently working with Gordon Love on biomarker records of the Neoproterozoic.

Alison was my first graduate student - well, not officially, but at least in spirit. In reality she was a PhD student at USC with Frank Corsetti, but still spent a fair bit of time in my lab. Alison has since moved on to a postdoctoral position at WHOI.

Gail (a postdoc) worked on using spatial patterns of carbon-isotopic fractionation to authenticate the biogenic (or abiogenic) origins of distinctive sedimentary fabrics, such as stromatolites.

Libin worked in my lab as a junior and senior undergraduate geology major (2004 - 2005), working on methods for the analysis of oxygenated VOC's in seawater.

Kim spent the spring of her undergraduate sophomore year (2004) working in the lab learning to analyze PAH's from charcoal. The goal of her project was to examine the ratios of different PAH's produced by burning wood under different conditions.

Valerie spent the summer before her sophomore year (2004) at Caltech helping us collect porewaters from the Santa Barbara and Santa Monica basin aboard the New Horizon, and then analyzing sulfate and nitrate porewater profiles from those samples.

Elise was the first person I hired at Caltech, and the first one to leave. She worked as my lab technician from 2003-2004, and is now pursuing a career in journalism (the next Geraldo?).