Dear Alumni,
Greetings again from Oakland! As I sat down to write this letter I realized that the last one we sent was at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic. During those years, the department saw much turmoil (as did the world), but we nevertheless have continued to evolve in many ways. We are sad to say goodbye to faculty members Kyle Whittinghill, Danielle Andrews-Brown, and John Gardner, who all departed for other opportunities. On a happier note, last year we were able to hire four teaching professors, including Dr. Daniel Williams (GIS/Remote Sensing), Dr. Abigail Carroll and Dr. Anusha Balangoda (Environmental Science), and Mark Collins, who returned to reprise his role as Environmental Studies program coordinator. This year we are pleased to welcome Dr. Evan Ramos, who studies the physical and chemical evolution of the Earth’s surface. We are also happy to announce belatedly that Dr. Patrick Shirey joined our department as an Assistant Professor a few years ago, and has been injecting a lot of energy into our Environmental Studies program! Dr. Rosemary Capo has been serving as the Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies and Academic Integrity Officer of the Dietrich School since 2020, where she has helped to guide graduate studies across the College of Arts and Sciences as well as in Geology and Environmental Science.
Our two research centers, the Climate and Global Change Center and the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory continue to foster new research, outreach, and collaboration. For example, in the last year the Climate and Global Change Center hosted two workshops, one on “Paleoclimate and Environmental Change in Mexico and Guatemala”, with participants coming from a number of other institutions, including scientists from Europe and Mexico (which was held simultaneously online and in person due to our Zoom skills learned during the pandemic…). The leadership team of the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory (Emily Elliott, Dan Bain, Eitan Shelef, John Gardner, Patrick Shirey, Megan Guy) received the Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS) Impact Goals Award. The ARIS Awards recognize researchers and practitioners undertaking exemplary work in the societal impact of research and higher education.
Our faculty continue to pursue cutting-edge research in a wide variety of areas, including paleoclimate and environmental change, volcanic hazards, impacts of energy extraction, mountain building, nitrogen in the environment, heavy metal contamination, water resources, carbon sequestration, and carbon storage in arctic permafrost. In particular, the department prides itself on providing research opportunities for undergraduate students in both the field and laboratories where students get the chance to explore rock and environmental samples using an array of analytical equipment and tools.
Since our last letter, Dr. Rosemary Capo was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and also selected as an AGU LANDinG Academy Fellow. AGU LANDinG (Leadership Academy and Network for Diversity and Inclusion in the Geosciences) is leading change in the Earth and space sciences by creating a network of leaders empowered with skills and resources to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in their own institutions and across STEM. Dr. Emily Elliott was elected as a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America. Dr. Elliott and Dr. John Gardner (Co-PI) were awarded an NSF Convergence Accelerator to track real-time water quality with satellites. In collaboration with government agencies (USACE and PA DEP), local organizations (Upstream Pittsburgh and UrbanKind), and national organizations (The Internet of Water Coalition and The Center for Geospatial Solutions), they are piloting a decision support tool for water managers and decision-makers with a long-term goal of improving equitable access to clean rivers for drinking, habitat, and recreation across the Ohio River Basin.
Graduate students Arielle Wood received the Whittington Dissertation Fellowship, Victoria Buford received a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship, Dietrich School Predoctoral Fellow Tuition Scholarship, and a GSA/ExxonMobil Bighorn Basin Field Award, and Ben Hedin and Julio Caineta received Andrew Mellow Graduate Fellowships. In addition, Evan Collins received a fellowship to attend the 2019 International Summer School in Astrobiology in Santander, Spain, Memphis Hill was accepted to both the 2019 Summer Soil Institute and the UC-Irvine 2019 Microbiomes and Global Change Summer Institute, and Becky Tishermann was elected to be the chair of the Gordon Research Seminar on Catchment Science: Interactions of Hydrology, Biology, and Geochemistry in 2021. In the 2023-24 academic year, our student success continued:
- GES graduate students Giannina Ramirez, Morgan Spatz, and Clair Mock received ARCS Pittsburgh Endowed Scholar Award scholarships.
- GES graduate student Chloe Glover received a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellowship with the US Geological Survey.
- GES graduate student Godspower Ubit was selected as a 2023-24 ADI Geo-History Fellow
- GES graduate student Jamie Vornlocher received the Leo B. and Teresa Y. Wegemer Endowed STEM Fellowship
- GES graduate students Punwath Prum and Godspower Ubit received the 2024 Mellon Fellowship
- GES graduate student Laura Lopera Congote received the 2024 Gutierrez Fellowship
- GES graduate student Elijah Hall received the HHMI Gilliam Fellowship
- GES graduate student Kristi Dobra received the 2024 Wegemer STEM Fellow
- GES student Giannina Ramirez received a K. Leroy Irvis Fellowship this past year
- GES undergraduate students Ashlynn Moretti, Maggie Lincoln and Martina Frederick received the 2024 Pitt Sustainability Award
- GES undergraduate students Julia Evers, Elise Rinke, Mollie Rothbaum, and Ana Rowley received the 2024 Undergraduate Student Sustainability Champion Award
- GES undergraduate student Christy Kim received the Erika Ninos Student Leadership Award
We are pleased to congratulate several of our Distinguished Alumni. In 2023-24 Clare Sierawaski (A&S ’05) was awarded our Distinguished Alumna award in recognition of her work in the energy policy arena. As senior energy counselor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Sierawski helps lead energy policy for the Rural Development mission at USDA, including helping develop, launch, and manage its $13 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funding for clean energy in rural America. Previously, she has served at the White House as a special assistant to the President for climate change finance, a lead on clean energy projects in West Africa for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, and an environmental policy advisor for the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 2022-23 Dr. Cheryl Hapke (yes, the daughter of Professor Emeritus Bruce Hapke) was awarded our Distinguished Alumna award in recognition of her career in coastal geology with the US Geological Survey, as well as private consulting companies. Her current research focuses on coastal vulnerability and sea-level rise adaptation, developing new tools and approaches to evolve the science of coastal hazards and risk
We are proud of our current and former students and faculty, from whom we have been fortunate to receive support and your gifts allow us to offer extraordinary opportunities to our students. Thank you all for your continued support! Please keep in touch and stop by and see us if you are in the Pittsburgh area.
Sincerely,
Josef P. Werne
Professor and Chair