Graduate students

Troy Ferland

Troy earned a B.S. in chemistry and an M.S. in Geology at Pitt before joining our group in fall of 2017.  He brings with him a lot of experience with TEX-86 methods and an enthusiasm for all things lacustrine.  His current research is focused on fire, climate, and vegetation dynamics in eastern Africa during the Plio/Pliestocene, and his is working with cores and in the field at Olduvai Gorge, in Tanzania.
Youki Sato
Youki joined our group in Fall 2020, after working in environmental consulting.  He completed a M.S. in environmental chemistry at Rutgers and is a graduate of Dickinson College, with a B.S. in chemistry.  Youki is tackling novel methods for analyses of isotopes within organic acids and other small organic compounds of relevance to astrobiology.

Emma Hartke

Emma joined us in Fall 2020, after having graduated from the University of Iowa.  She brings experience with isotope stratigraphy, having completed a senior thesis on chemostratigraphy applications to paleozoic strata.  Emma is studying plant and fire biomarkers in Croatian lake sediments to understand past climate variability during early Neolithic settlements in the region.

Gabriella Weise (postdoc)

Gabriella completed her PhD at NIOZ in 2019 and is working on new isotopologue methods involving amino acids.  Gabriella lives in California and works in the labs of our collaborator, Alex Sessions at Caltech.  She looks forward to also spending time at the Penn State labs, once the pandemic allows.

Esther Muñoz

Esther is investigating novel ways to evaluate the isotopologues of adenine and other RNA-related compounds in a project co-advised with Chris House. Her aspirations are to understand the imprint of biochemical pathways on this key biochemical. 

Katie Horisk

Katie is supervised by Sarah Ivory and is working in our labs to investigate biomarker signatures from hyrax middens.  She is interested in archaeology, and working to reconstruct climate variations in the late Holocene using plant waxes and hydrogen isotope signatures.

Kalle Jahn

Kalle is a hydrogeologist and investigating PFAS (perflourinated compounds), in soils and karst aquifers.  Kalle hails from Vermont, and brings considerable computational expertise to our group.