Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Showing 31-39 of 39 Results
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Jonathan Payne
Dorrell William Kirby Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy goal in research is to understand the interaction between environmental change and biological evolution using fossils and the sedimentary rock record. How does environmental change influence evolutionary and ecological processes? And conversely, how do evolutionary and ecological changes affect the physical environment? I work primarily on the marine fossil record over the past 550 million years.
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David Pollard
The Barney and Estelle Morris Professor of Earth Sciences, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research aims to understand how faults and fractures initiate and evolve in Earth's brittle crust, how they affect the flow of molten rock, groundwater, and hydrocarbons, and the crucial role faults and fractures play in earthquake generation, folding of sedimentary strata, and volcanic eruption.
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Laura Schaefer
Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and, by courtesy, of Geophysics
Current Research and Scholarly Interestsearly Earth atmosphere; planetary differentiation; rocky exoplanet atmospheric chemistry; planetary interiors; atmosphere-interior exchange on Earth-like planets; planetary habitability; Venus atmospheric evolution; volcanic gases on Io and volatile loss
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Erik Sperling
Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Associate Professor, by courtesy, of Oceans
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe research interests in the Sperling Lab are Earth history and the evolution of life, and the interactions between the biosphere and the geosphere. As such this research can generally be considered paleontology, insofar as paleontology encompasses all aspects of the history of life.
Consequently, we define our research agenda by the questions we are interested in, rather than the tools used. This research incorporates multiple lines of evidence, and multiple tools, to investigate questions in the history of life. These lines of evidence include fossil data, molecular phylogenetics, sedimentary geochemistry, and developmental and ecological data from modern organisms. Ultimately, the goal is to link environmental change with organismal and ecological response through the lens of physiology.
Our field research takes place all over the world--current areas include:
-NW Canada (Yukon and Northwest Territories): Research has been conducted on the early Neoproterozoic Fifteenmile Group, Cryogenian and Ediacaran Windermere Supergroup, and on the Ordovician-Devonian Road River Group in the southern Richardson Mountains
-Southern Canadian Cordillera: Work here has focused on the early Cambrian Mural Formation and its soft-bodied fauna.
-England and Wales: Cambrian-Silurian successions in the Welsh Basin
-Namibia: Ediacaran Nama Group
-Upwelling zones: We study the oxygen minimum zone offshore California as an analogue for ancient low-oxygen oceans. -
Jonathan Stebbins
Professor of Geological Sciences, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly Interestsstructure and dynamics of crystalline, glassy, and molten inorganic materials and how these relate to geologically and technologically important properties and processes; solid state Nuclear Magnetic Resoance (NMR); mineralogy; igneous petrology; glass science
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Sonia Tikoo-Schantz
Assistant Professor of Geophysics and, by courtesy, of Earth and Planetary Sciences
BioI utilize paleomagnetism and fundamental rock magnetism as tools to investigate problems in the planetary sciences. By studying the remanent magnetism recorded within rocks from differentiated planetary bodies, I can learn about core processes that facilitate the generation of dynamo magnetic fields within the Earth, Moon, and planetesimals. Determining the longevities and paleointensities of dynamo fields that initially magnetized rocks also provides insight into the long-term thermal evolution (i.e., effects of secular cooling) of planetary bodies. I also use paleomagnetism to understand impact cratering events, which are the most ubiquitous modifiers of planetary surfaces across the solar system. Impact events produce heat, shock, and sometimes hydrothermal systems that are all capable of resetting magnetization within impactites and target rocks via thermal, shock, and chemical processes. Therefore, I am able to use a combination of paleomagnetic and rock magnetic characterization to investigate shock pressures, temperatures, structural changes, and post-impact chemical alteration experienced by cratered planetary surfaces.
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Tiziana Vanorio
Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and, by courtesy, of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsRock Physics, Fossil Energy Exploration, Volcanic and Geothermal Environments and Microseismicity
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Jane Kathryn Willenbring
Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and, by courtesy of Earth System Science
BioJane Willenbring joined Stanford as an Associate Professor in the summer of 2020. Jane is a geologist who solves problems related to the Earth surface. Her research is primarily done to understand the evolution of the Earth’s surface - especially how landscapes are affected by tectonics, climate change, and life. She and her research group use geochemical techniques, high-resolution topographic data, field observations, and, when possible, couple these data to landscape evolution numerical models and ice sheet models. The geochemical tools she uses and develops often include cosmogenic nuclide systems, which provide powerful, novel methods to constrain rates of erosion and mineral weathering. Jane has also started to organize citizen science campaigns and apply basic science principles to problems of human health with an ultimate broader impact goal of cleaning up urban areas and environments impacted by agriculture. She received her B.Sc. with honors from the North Dakota State University where she was a McNair Scholar and in the NDSU scholars program. She holds a Masters degree from Boston University. Her Ph.D. is in Earth Science from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada where she was a Killam Scholar. She was a Synthesis Postdoctoral Fellow through the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics at the Saint Anthony Falls Lab at the University of Minnesota, and an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow and then subsequently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Helmholz GFZ Potsdam, Germany. Jane was previously an Associate Professor in the Geosciences Research Division and Thomas and Evelyn Page Chancellor's Endowed Faculty Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego where she was the director of the Scripps Cosmogenic Isotope Laboratory (SCI-Lab). She was also a tenure-track professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She will be a Stanford University Gabilan Faculty Fellow in 2021-2023. She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and was the inaugural recipient of the Marguerite T. Williams award from the American Geophysical Union.
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David Zhen Yin
Senior Research Scientist - Physical
BioDavid Zhen Yin is the co-founder and program director of Stanford Mineral-X, a research innovation hub on creating resilient mineral supply chains for energy transitions. He is also the principal scientist at Stanford Center for Earth Resources Forecasting. Since 2024, David has been serving on the US National Academies Committee on optimizing the USGS Mineral Resources Program.
David develops data-scientific approaches for prediction, uncertainty quantification, and decision-making in critical earth resources exploration and development. He has broad experience with complex projects involving academia and industry and has broad knowledge of the fields. His research delivered several key technologies transferred as in-house technologies in Chevron, Equinor, and KoBold. In addition, his research developments have been implemented on various subjects, from Antarctica bed topography modeling, critical mineral explorations in Canada/China/US, and the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico projects.
Before joining Stanford, David was a Research Associate at the Edinburgh Time-Lapse Project in Scotland, leading a geophysical monitoring research project in collaboration with Equinor from 2016 to 2018. He was also a technology consultant at Equinor's Research Center in Bergen, Norway. Then, he was a Chevron CoRE Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford from 2018 to 2021. He was the Co-PI of the Stanford-KoBold collaboration from 2020 to 2022 which led to a $192.5 million Series B fundraising.
David received his Ph.D. in Geosciences from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK, in 2016. His research interests include data science for geosciences, geological uncertainty quantification, and decision-making under uncertainty. He has authored one book and tens of articles in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences.