Joining the Lab at the University of Houston

Research Opportunities:

  • There are many opportunities for research but one of my primary areas of focus is to understand how changing climates and environments may have affected human evolution. I am collaborating with archaeologists and paleontologists in Kenya, Tanzania, and Armenia on a variety of projects. This research would involve a combination of lab and fieldwork.

  • I am looking to recruit a graduate student working on the Paleocene - Eocene paleosols of the San Juan Basin and for Fall 2023. You can read a little about this ongoing work here.

  • Although I use a variety of techniques to reconstruct terrestrial paleoenvironments and paleoclimates, I primarily use paleosols or fossil soils to better understand past landscapes. I am interested in continuing to develop new paleosol-based proxies to better understand these landscapes. The tools I am currently using to do this research are bulk geochemistry and stable isotopes.  

  • Finally, I am interested in furthering our understanding of triple oxygen isotopes in waters and carbonates, specifically pedogenic carbonates and tufas. This is an exciting new area of research that will allow for much greater understand of hydroclimate in the past.   

  •  I am open to other project ideas, but these will be my primary areas of focus for the upcoming years.

Potential Graduate Students

If you are interested in applying, here is more information about the department and applying to the University of Houston. The deadline for applications is in early January. Please see the University of Houston website for the most up-to-date information.  

Before contacting me about graduate school please consider the following:

  1. Think carefully about what you want to get out of graduate school and talk to current graduate students if possible to get some perspective on what graduate school is like and what the application process is like.

  2. Read through my website and some of my publications or those of colleagues doing related work to get a better sense of what kind of research I do and why I do it.  

  3. Finally, email me to articulate what kind of research you are specifically interested in pursuing in graduate school, tell me a little bit about yourself and any prior research experience you have had, and why you are interested in working with me. Please include your CV.

I hope to hear from you, and I am really excited to get started of some of this exciting new research!

Potential Postdocs:

I don’t currently have any openings for a postdoc in my lab group, but contact me by email if you are interested in any of the above research opportunities or with other related research topics. I also encourage potential postdocs to seek out funding from other sources such as the NSF Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship, which are currently due in September. Please contact me well in advance of this deadline.