New Faculty

I am excited to be returning to UB after a military move to Detroit for 2019-2020.  I am a paleoecologist interested in population dynamics and environmental conditions prior to mass extinction events. My current research work revolves around the geochemistry and paleoenvironmental conditions surrounding Cambrian Burgess Shale-type preservation, population shifts of microfossil assemblages in the Catskill Deltaic Sequences of western New York in the Late Devonian, and methane cold-seep and mud volcanoes in epicontinental basins of the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway. As a clinical hire I am also tasked with the development and implementation of a two-phase professional development and outreach program in collaboration with the Environment & Sustainability Department.

I am a glaciologist whose research focuses on understanding how much sea level may rise in the next century. I use a combination of tools that range from applied mathematics, numerical models and remote sensing observations. My modeling spans the spectrum of local processes, such as understanding the impact of bedrock topography on ice dynamics to that of large-scale continental ice sheet models. As sea level projections depend on knowledge of atmospheric and oceanic conditions that drive ice sheet evolution, a large part of my research targets how to improve these external climatic drivers as well as the use of multiple models for projections. I joined UB as an Empire Innovation Professor within the Department of Geology and RENEW institute in fall 2020 and I look forward to new collaborations and interacting with students.