Faculty [M-Z]

Scot Martin

Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Chemistry

Scot T. Martin is the Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Chemistry at Harvard University, with appointments in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences & the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

29 Oxford Street, Pierce Hall, Room 126
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Office Location: Pierce Hall 122
p: 617-495-7620 f: 617-496-1471

Brendan Meade

Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Brendan Meade first joined Harvard as a Daly Postdoctoral fellow and continued as an Assistant then Associate Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences. 

His research is focused on the geodetic imaging of earthquake cycle processes with an emphasis on the detection of interseismic elastic strain accumulation.  Meade's lab is responsible for deconvolving tectonic and earthquake cycle signals across the Japanese Islands to identify the coupled subduction zone interface that ruptured during the great Tohoku-oki earthquake of 2011.  He holds Ph.D. in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and B.A. in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from Johns Hopkins University.

Research Group Coordinator:

Office Location: Geological Museum 221
Mailing Address: EPS, 20 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138

p: 617-495-8921 f: 617-495-8839

Jerry Mitrovica

Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science

Jerry X. Mitrovica joined Harvard in 2009 as a Professor of Geophysics.His work focuses on the Earth's response to external and internal forcings that have time scales ranging from seconds to billions of years. He has written extensively on topics ranging from the connection of mantle convective flow to the geological record, the rotational stability of the Earth and other terrestrial planets, ice age geodynamics, and the geodetic and geophysical signatures of ice sheet melting in our progressively warming world. Sea-level change has served as the major theme of these studies, with particular emphasis on critical events in ice age climate and on the sea-level fingerprints of modern polar ice sheet collapse.

Mitrovica is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University. He is a former Director of the Earth Systems Evolution Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and J. Tuzo Wilson Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto, where he also received his Ph.D. degree. He is the recipient of the Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America, the W.S Jardetsky Medal from Columbia University, the A.E.H. Love Medal from the European Geosciences Union and the Rutherford Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Canada. He is also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America, as well as a past Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Research Group Coordinator:

Office location: Geological Museum 203B
Mailing address: EPS, 20 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
p: 617-496-2732, f: 617-495-8839

Ann Pearson

PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences
Murray and Martha Ross Professor of Environmental Sciences
Head Tutor

Ann Pearson is the Murray and Martha Ross Professor of Environmental Sciences. Her research focuses on applications of analytical chemistry, isotope geochemistry, and molecular biology to biochemical oceanography and Earth history. 

Through study of the “how, when, and why” of microbial processes, her work yields insight about environmental conditions on Earth today, in the past, and about potential human impacts on our future.  Recent projects have focused on the carbon and nitrogen cycles and on pathways of lipid biosynthesis.

Pearson received a Fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation in 2004, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship in 2009, and was named a Marine Microbiology Initiative Investigator of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2012. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Oceanography from the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, where she was awarded the C. G. Rossby Award for Best Dissertation in the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate; and a B.A. in Chemistry from Oberlin College.

Research Group Coordinator: Priya Putta

EPS
20 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138

Office location: Geo Museum, Room 362
p: 617-384-8392, f: 617-495-8839

Daniel Schrag

Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology
Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering
Co-Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program

 

Daniel P. Schrag is the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, and Co-Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program.

Schrag studies climate and climate change over the broadest range of Earth history. He is particularly interested in how information on climate change from the geologic past can lead to better understanding of anthropogenic climate change in the future. In addition to his work on geochemistry and climatology, Schrag studies energy technology and policy, including carbon capture and storage and low-carbon synthetic fuels.

From 2009-2017, Schrag served on  President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  Among various honors, he is the recipient of the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union and a MacArthur Fellowship. Schrag earned a B.S. in geology and geophysics and political science from Yale University and his Ph.D. in geology from the University of California at Berkeley. He came to Harvard in 1997 after teaching at Princeton.

Geochemical oceanography, paleoclimatology, stable isotope geochemistry.

Assistant: Cayla Jett

Museum of Comparative Zoology, Room 433F
26 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
p: (617) 495-7676, f: (617) 496-0425

John Shaw

Harry C. Dudley Professor of Structural and Economic Geology
Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Vice Provost for Research at Harvard University

John H. Shaw joined the Harvard Faculty in 1997 and leads an active research program investigating structure of the Earth's crust. Prof. Shaw's program in Structural Geology & Tectonics emphasizes: 1) studies of active faults for earthquake hazards assessment; 2) regional tectonics of mountain belts and other plate margins; 3) community fault and velocity modeling; and 4) subsurface energy development and storage, carbon sequestration, and environmental impacts associated with these activities. These efforts involve the use of modern geologic and geophysical data, including 3D seismic reflection surveys and multispectral remote sensing imagery, and advanced numerical modeling methods. Prof. Shaw leads the Structural Geology & Earth Resources Program at Harvard, an industry-academic consortium that provides data, software, and support for research

For Professor Shaw’s administrative duties, please see: https://research.harvard.edu

Research Group Coordinator: Simone Rivard

EPS
20 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138

Office location - Geological Museum 215
p: (617) 495-8008, f: (617) 495-8839

Elsie Sunderland

Fred Kavli Professor of Environmental Chemistry
Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences

Research in the Sunderland Lab focuses on how biogeochemical processes affect the fate, transport and food web bioaccumulation of trace metals and organic chemicals. Her group develops and applies models at a variety of scales ranging from ecosystems and ocean basins (e.g., the Gulf of Maine, the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans) to global applications to characterize how changes in climate and emissions affect human and ecological health, and the potential impacts of regulatory activities. Her group also makes key measurements of chemical concentrations and reaction rates in environmental samples (natural waters, sediments, and aquatic biota) and humans (hair, blood) to parameterize and evaluate environmental models.

Ongoing research is elucidating the biogeochemical cycling of compounds with contrasting physical and chemical properties that can be used to obtain insights into the varying exposure pathways and environmental lifetimes for industrial chemicals. The innovation in this work is to quantitatively analyze the entire exposure pathway for these compounds to identify their properties in air and water (e.g., stability in the atmosphere, photodegradation in water, environmental partitioning behavior) that enhance chemical persistence and ultimate accumulation in biota.

Assistant: Robert Stanhope

Pierce Hall 127
p: (617) 496-0858

Eli Tziperman

Pamela and Vasco McCoy, Jr. Professor of Oceanography and Applied Physics

Eli Tziperman joined Harvard as a Professor of oceanography and applied physics in 2003.  His research interests include large-scale climate and ocean dynamics, including El Nino, thermohaline circulation, abrupt climate change, glacial cycles and equable climates; advanced methods of ocean data assimilation. 

He teaches courses in oceanography, climate and applied math.  Before Joining Harvard he was a post doc to a prof, 1988-2003, at the Weizmann institute of science.  He holds a BA in physics and mathematics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a PhD in physical oceanography from the joint program of MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Large scale climate and ocean dynamics, including El Nino, thermohaline circulation, abrupt climate change, glacial cycles and equable climates.

Research Group Coordinator: Priya Putta

EPS
20 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138

Office location - Geological Museum 456
p: (617) 384-8381, f: (617) 496-7411

Kevin Uno

Associate Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology
Affiliated Faculty Member of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Kevin Uno is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.
11 Divinity Ave
Cambridge, MA 02138