Six EPS graduate students receive highly competitive fellowships from the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Ford Foundation, and the ARCS Foundation

April 01, 2009

Rachel Brown, Elisabeth Derse, and Tess Russo all received NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. These fellowships provide 3 years of support for graduate study leading to a research-based M.S. or Ph.D. degree, and are intended for students who are in the early stages of their graduate studies.
 
Rachel works with Jim Zachos. The goal of her research is to better constrain the role of the ocean in the global carbon cycle during times of high or rapidly change global temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, such as during Eocene hyperthermal events or across the Eocene-Oligocene transition. To do this, she will study the trace element chemistry of fossil benthic foraminifera as a proxy for deep-water carbonate ion concentration in order to reconstruct and characterize past fluctuations in marine carbonate chemistry.

Elisabeth works with Adina Paytan and is studying the impacts of ocean acidification on ecosystems through both laboratory and field-based experiments.

Tess works with Andy Fisher. She is currently evaluating groundwater infiltration and drainage behavior during a controlled flood in a wetland in Yosemite National Park. A common theme of her research will be analysis of surface water-groundwater interactions, specifically flow dynamics in the vadose zone during recharge events.
 
 
Nadine Quintana Krupinski was awarded a Ford Foundation Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship. These 3-year fellowships are intended to facilitate the academic and professional development of students who have demonstrated superior scholarship and show promise of future achievement, are committed to a career in university-level teaching and research, and are well prepared to use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. Nadine is working with Adina Paytan. Her research will focus on creating high-resolution records of oceanic pH in coastal California over the past 10,000 years through study of the geochemistry of marine microfossils. Her work will provide a context for understanding the effects of ongoing ocean acidification on marine ecosystems.
 
 
Jake Walter received an award from the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program. This 3-year predoctoral fellowship seeks to ensure continued training of a highly qualified workforce in disciplines required to achieve NASA’s scientific goals. Jake is working with Slawek Tulaczyk, Emily Brodsky, and Susan Schwartz. His work focuses on stick-slips and other basal processes under ice sheets at different temporal- and spatial-scales. He is integrating seismologic observations with field-based observations (i.e., GPS) to develop seismology as a robust remote sensing technique for the cryospheric research.
 
 
Calla Schmidt has been selected to receive an Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation scholarship for 2009-2010. This award carries a scholarship of $10,000. Calla works with Andy Fisher. The award will support her research on the rates and dynamics of water quality improvement during managed aquifer recharge in agricultural basins. The scholarship recipients will be recognized at the annual ARCS Foundation Scholarship Awards Luncheon to be held in San Francisco on October 20, 2008.