Group members.
Individuals interested in undergraduate, graduate, or postdoc research opportunities in the Fischer Group at Caltech are urged to send a brief statement of background and interest. [recruitment]
Woodward W. Fischer [principal investigator]
Assistant Professor of Geobiology in Geological and Planetary Sciences. PhD Harvard University. BA Colorado College. I'm often called by my nickname, Woody. My research generally falls in the subdiscipline of Historical Geobiology, combining field geology with contemporary geochemical and molecular biological laboratory techniques to understand and explore the relationship between life and Earth surface environments, particularly during the first 4 billion years of planetary evolution.
Rebecca Zentmyer
Assistant Research Scientist. MSc Queen's University. BA Colorado College. I assist in several ongoing research projects in the lab. Right now I'm working on SIMS analyses of stable isotopes in banded iron formation. In general, I'm interested in Precambrian Earth History.
Seth Finnegan
Postdoctoral Scholar. PhD University of California-Riverside. BS University of Chicago. My background is in paleobiology, with interests in (1) patterns of selective extinction in the fossil record, and what these can tell us about mechanisms of extinction time, (2) Phanerozoic trends in the energetics of marine ecosystems, and (3) the Ordovician radiation and the end-Ordovician extinction, which are the focus of most of my fieldwork. At Caltech, I am working with Woody Fischer and researchers at several other institutions to better understand Late Ordovician-Early Silurian how changes in climate and ocean chemistry are related to the end-Ordovician mass extinctions.
Kristin Bergmann
Graduate Student. BA Carleton College. I'm currently working with Woody Fischer, John Grotzinger and John Eiler to understand the connections between carbonate deposition and changes in Earth's past climate and seawater chemistry. I use a variety of techniques including clumped isotope geochemistry to probe the temperature and fluid composition of depositional and diagenetic environments.
Allison H. Barnes
Sophomore Undergraduate at Caltech. Geology major. I go by my nickname, Haley. I'm currently working with Woody Fischer on a SURF project aimed at the Ediacaran rise of atmospheric oxygen.
