Associate Professor - henkes.gregory@stonybrook.edu 

PhD, Johns Hopkins University // BS, Bates College  -  I grew up in coastal southern Maine, where the ocean, lakes, and mountains were all just a quick drive, flight, or float away. One naturally develops a deep sense (and love) for the natural world in this kind of environment. Subsequently, I studied biology - with a focus on marine ecology and oceanography - at Bates and in doing so interacted often with sedimentologists and geochemists in the Department of Geology. After graduating, I was briefly the manager of a stable isotope facility at the Smithsonian Institution, and soon after started graduate school at Johns Hopkins. Before arriving on Long Island, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. My research interests span a range of spatio-temporal scales, from the Precambrian to the late Cenozoic, and a variety of rock types. When I’m not writing, wrestling a mass spectrometer, or teaching, I’m spending time with my spouse, our two daughters, two dogs, and several chickens.   Google Scholar

Assistant Professor - Ecology & Evolution

Research Assistant Professor - School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences

PhD, Stony Brook University // BS & MS, Newcastle University  - Ollie is a conservation ecologist whose research focuses on identifying the drivers of ecosystem structure and function, primarily using bulk and compound specific stable isotope measurements. He is a lab alumni, earning his PhD in Marine and Atmospheric Sciences from Stony Brook University in 2020 and was then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Mexico Center for Stable Isotopes from 2020-2022. After that he was the  Director of Research for the non-profit organization Beneath The Waves, and returned to SBU as a Research Assistant Professor in 2023. His interests span a broad range of species and ecosystems throughout the Caribbean, United Kingdom, and United States. He works closely with state, federal, and non-profit organizations to better understand the responses of marine organisms to anthropogenic activities and climate change. I am a huge soccer fan and an avid support of the mighty Leeds United!

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Geosciences MS student, 2017-2019; PhD student (Henkes), 2019-

BS, Lehigh University  -  Yang is working on clumped isotope thermometry of marine carbonates and fossil from the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, in collaboration with Kirk Cochran (SoMAS) and Neil Landman (AMNH). This work has motivated new bond reordering experiments on aragonite and the analysis of modern cephalopod shells from New Caledonia.   

Geosciences PhD student (Henkes), 2019-   

BS, Portland State University  -  Mae is developing modern and Miocene climate records from the Turkana Basin in northwestern Kenya as part of the Turkana Miocene Project (TMP). In our field campaigns Mae collects modern waters and Miocene pedogenic carbonates for isotope analysis. She is also working on new methods for extracting paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental information from samples that are differentially overprinted by diagenesis.

Geosciences PhD student (Rasbury), 

BS, Stony Brook University  -  Kevin can mostly be found next door in the FIRST lab, but does split his time between groups in his efforts to couple LA-ICP-MS U-Pb dating of carbonates with clumped isotope thermometry. He is applying these coupled measurements to samples from McDermitt Caldera, NV, and Turkana, Kenya, and is also a member of the TMP. Kevin is broadly interested in how these isotope systems record volcanism and tectonism in the two different geologic settings.

Geosciences graduate student (Henkes), 2023-  

Geosciences MS student (Henkes), 2023-

BS, SUNY Potsdam  -  Veronica is working on clumped isotopes of modern shark teeth from aquarium-reared and natural individuals. She is also interested in measuring ancient teeth, much of which is being done in close collaboration with Oliver Shipley. Her undergraduate research revolved around mapping and GIS analysis of paleogeomorphic features in Northern New York. 

Ecology & Evolution PhD student (Smiley), 2020- 

BS & BA, Union College  -  Imogene researches the response of small mammal populations to abiotic and biotic factors associated with spatio-temporal changes in climate and landscape in the Northeast United States with current field sites in the Pine Barrens at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Imogene models individual and population seasonal isotopic niche using bulk stable isotope analysis. She integrates diet, body condition, and environmental data with ecological theory to investigate trade-offs associated with the generalist eco-evolutionary strategy.

SoMAS PhD student