New faculty bring variety of research interests
The Department of Geology and Geophysics' newest faculty members bring to Yale a wide variety of research interests.
"The modern study of the Earth and its systems needs a broad, synthetic overview," says Danny Rye, former chair of the department, who helped bring many of the scientists to Yale. "We needed to bolster geochemistry and paleontology, and inject resources to support our strong faculty in the areas of geophysics, oceans and atmospheres, and tectonics."
According to Rye, all the new faculty members are esteemed among their peers, share an eagerness to work with undergraduate students as well as graduate students, and have demonstrated an ability to bring together what in some cases might have been isolated areas of inquiry.
The new faculty members are:
David Bercovici is considered a moving force and a world leader in the area of solid Earth geophysics as well as geodynamics, focusing on the physical processes that occur in the Earth and how they interact. He was previously professor and chair of geology and geophysics at the University of Manoa, where he also headed the Division of Marine Geology and Geophysics. Prior to that, he was a visiting professor at Ecole Normal Superieure de Lyon in France and a postdoctoral fellow at the Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His numerous awards include the James B. Macelwane Medal, the top honor bestowed by the American Geophysical Union.
Shun-ichiro Karato comes to Yale from the University of Minnesota. A native of Japan, Karato is the leading senior scientist in the study of deformation and physical properties of deep Earth materials. He ranks among the top four scientists in the world in the broader area of mineral and rock physics. His lab-based experimental work has had a broad impact in geophysics, especially in seismology and geodynamics of the mantle and core. His work has been highly recognized, and he was honored with the Alexander von Humboldt Prize in 1995 and the Japan Academy Prize in 1999.
John Wettlaufer joined the Yale faculty after serving as an affiliate associate professor in physics at the University of Washington and a senior physicist in its Applied Physics Laboratory. Wettlaufer is considered the leading mid-career scientist in the area of ice and climate, a sub-discipline of the broader area of climate and climate change. He will teach thermodynamics, physical oceanography and specialized courses in the role of ice physics in the climate system. At Yale, he is expected to help bridge the work being done in the fluid and the solid Earth areas of geophysics.
Derek Briggs was chair of the Department of Earth Sciences and professor of paleontology at the University of Bristol before coming to Yale. An eminent paleontologist, he was hired to reinvigorate research and teaching in the area of earth and evolutionary sciences. Briggs has won numerous important awards in geoscience and is a member of the Royal Society. At Yale, he is expected to help the department develop a broadly integrated program of research and teaching encompassing a range of disciplines.
Ruth Blake joins the Yale faculty having completed a postdoctoral research fellowship here. Blake is considered an outstanding investigator in the field of geochemistry, particularly in the relationship between bacteria and the surface chemistry of minerals. As a graduate student she developed new techniques for the stable isotope analysis of phosphates. Among several awards and honors, she received the Clarke Medal from the Geochemical Society in 2002.
Steven Sherwood is considered one of the top young scientists in the world working on the physical processes that control the Earth's climate. He is focusing on the topic of tropical convection, a key process in controlling the moisture content of the troposphere and stratosphere, and in turn, in controlling the global greenhouse effect. He will teach physical meteorology, environmental fluid dynamics, and an advanced course on convection. He recently won a career award from the National Science Foundation.
Peter Reiners most recently served as assistant professor at Washington State University. Reiners, who last year won a career award from the National Science Foundation, focuses on the following areas of geochemistry: melting of the Earth's mantle and the generation of basaltic magmas at places like Hawaii and volcanic arcs, and also geochronology. In particular, he is interested in thermochronology, a type of mineral dating that measures the thermal histories of rocks to determine the timing and rates of a wide range of processes such as mountain uplift, erosion, forest fires, magmatism and meteorite histories.
David Evans, a former undergraduate at Yale in geology and geophysics, specializes in the area of paleomagnetics and the reconstruction of ancient continents. Paleomagnetism employs a sophisticated set of methods for reading the record of the Earth's ancient magnetic field from the magnetization preserved in rock samples. He recently won a highly competitive Packard Fellowship.
Mark Pagani brings strength to the department in the area of paleoecology and environmental science. His work, which focuses on developing innovative new methods of determining past atmospheric compositions and the past productivity of the Earth's biota, is already challenging a number of accepted principles in the field of paleo-environmental studies. He previously was a scientist at the National Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University and a research fellow at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Jun Korenaga was most recently a research fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. He is considered a generalist with expertise in seismology, magma-physics, petrology and geochemistry, fluid dynamics and mineral physics. His long-term goal is to understand the physical and chemical evolution of the Earth's mantle, such as how the mantle has both cooled and chemically differentiated through time.
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