About the Organizers

Image description: Headshot of Elizabeth, a white woman with brown hair in a ponytail, wearing glasses. She is wearing a black jacket and has a gray 3D printed trilobite on her shoulder, which she is pointing to.

Elizabeth Sibert

Elizabeth Sibert is a Hutchinson Fellow at Yale University. Elizabeth fell in love with the ocean as a kid and never looked back. She studied biology in undergrad, and received her PhD in Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2016. Elizabeth uses microfossils, especially tiny fish teeth and shark scales, to study the evolutionary and ecological response of marine consumers to global change, combining her two favorite topics: paleobiology and biological oceanography. In her spare time, Elizabeth can often be found upsidedown in the air as a professional-level circus artist. Elizabeth’s other work includes 3D printing fossils and improving accessibility, access, and inclusion in STEM, particularly geosciences and oceanography.

Image description: Rehemat is a brown-skinned woman, wearing a globe costume depicting the Earth. Her hair is tied back in a ponytail, and she is standing on a wooden box in a pedestrianised shopping area.

Rehemat Bhatia

Rehemat has been exploring research council life in the UK over the past few years. Prior to this, Rehemat was a postdoc at the University of Bristol, and completed her PhD at University College London. Her research focused on using the geochemistry of deep time planktic foraminifera to understand more about their palaeoecologies and responses to dramatic climatic change. Rehemat is also the Earth Science Women’s Network’s Co-Chair for Member Events, and an active advocate for equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility in STEM. She also was part of The Micropalaeontological Society’s committee from 2018 – 2021 as their Publicity Officer.
Rehemat also loves taking part in science outreach activities talking to the public and school/community groups about the awesomeness of earth & ocean sciences and foraminifera.

Image description: Photo of Jana, a white woman wearing a baseball hat and a pink jacket on a mountain in Flims, Switzerland. Her arms are outstretched and she is grinning, with clouds and mountains in the background.

Jana Burke

Dr. Jana Burke is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Michigan State University. She is a micropaleontologist and paleoceanographer who works primarily with planktonic foraminifera. She is particularly interested in the ways that individual organisms, species, and communities change in response to changes in their environment, which is probably a good thing given the transitory nature of ECR life. Jana first fell in love with the pal(a)eo-sciences as an undergraduate at Smith College and recently completed her PhD at Yale University. Jana is a fan of wise-cracking, handicrafts, and scream-singing at karaoke. She is also passionate about contributing to a strong, supportive, inclusive community of pal(a)eo-ECRs.

Image description: Pedro is a brown-eyed, dark-haired and bearded man, wearing a dark gray T-shirt. He is smiling and sitting in front of a blackboard, on which the names of two crocodylomorph species can be read. In front of him, on a wooden table, there are three skulls of fossil crocodylomorphs.

Pedro Godoy

Pedro is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). In 2021, Pedro was a Capes “Young Talent” Postdoctoral Fellow at the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil) and, from 201 to 2021, an NSF Postdoctoral Associate at Stony Brook University (USA). He did his PhD at the University of Birmingham (UK), and his MSc and BSc at the University of São Paulo (Brazil). Pedro works on fossil reptiles, with a special focus on crocodylians and their extinct relatives (crocodylomorphs). Pedro has been working on fossil crocodylomorphs for more than 10 years, exploring their evolution, systematics and paleobiology, which led him to visit many museum collections around the world. In particular, he is very interested in the long-term processes involved in the morphological variation exhibited by this amazing group of reptiles.

Image description: Chrissy is a white woman wearing a dark jacket. She is in a museum collections room painting liquid latex onto fossils, using a lamp to help them dry.

Chrissy Hall

Chrissy is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Lafayette College (Pennsylvania, USA), having finished her PhD at the University of California Riverside in 2019. Chrissy is broadly interested in how life responded to different environmental changes in the past. She is also a micropaleontologist, but works on Cenozoic ostracodes and also still plays around with the non-microfossil tri-radially symmetric Ediacaran fossils she worked on for her Master’s. Chrissy also really enjoys being involved in geoscience outreach activities, especially at grade schools and community events.

Image description:Natasha is a brown-skinned woman, wearing glasses and in a pink rain jacket, brown pants with a red backpack. She is wearing a cave helmet with two headlamps and nitrile gloves. She is standing inside a cave in southeastern New Mexico.

Natasha Sekhon

Natasha Sekhon is a Voss Postdoctoral and Presidential Diversity Fellow at Brown University. Natasha’s research interests lie in investigating terrestrial climate change over seasonal to millennial timescales through the Holocene. She uses the geochemistry of stalagmites from caves to reconstruct past climate change trends beyond the instrumental record. Natasha also works on characterizing modern cave systems that ultimately modulate the geochemical signals in stalagmites. She does so through continual monitoring of cave parameters such as cave ventilation, cave drip water, cave temperature to name a few. In addition to spending a lot of time in the subterranean world, Natasha is interested in increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM through outreach activities. She occasionally hosts radio shows that discusses science through fieldwork and music.

Past Organizers

Image description: Catherine is a white woman with brown hair, wearing a red shirt with sunglasses on her head. She is standing on a muddy bank of the PeeDee River holding a belemnite and smiling.

Catherine Davis

Kate Davis is a Donnelley Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University. After abandoning early career ambitions of “time-traveller” Catherine instead turned to micropaleontology and paleoceanography, completing her PhD at the University of California Davis in 2016. Her research focuses on how microfossils record their environment and the use of microfossil and sedimentary records to reconstruct oceanographic changes beyond the instrumental record. Kate is especially interested in acidification and deoxygenation in the pelagic ocean and how that impacts the biosphere, as well as in all things foraminiferal.

Image description: Andy is a white-skinned man, wearing a green shirt, grey hat, sunglasses, and a wedding band. He has a white-skinned young girl on his shoulders in a pink t-shirt with two white stripes on the sleeves and jeans. He also has a white-skinned baby strapped to his chest in a black and white child carrier. They are walking on a sidewalk in a city.

Andy Fraass

Andy is the Vice Chancellor’s Fellow in Earth Science at the University of Bristol. Andy is yet another micropaleontologist, and yes, works with planktic foraminifera. He’s moved around a lot in academia, starting at the University of Wisconsin, then University of Massachusetts (PhD), then the National Museum of Natural History, and finally Sam Houston State University before ending up in Bristol, until he drags his family to Canada next year. He’s interested in Cenozoic and Cretaceous paleoceanography, macro- and microevolution, and stratigraphy. He writes occasionally for Time Scavengers (timescavengers.org). With two kids in lockdown you will likely not see him during talks or you will with a toddler in his lap.