This summer we welcomed Shahd Mahaini to the lab through the Yale Peabody Museum EVOLUTIONS program. Shahd is a rising high school senior at the Engineering and Science University Magnet School in West Haven, CT. Yale graduate student, Lauren Lopes, served as co-mentor.

Shahd's work on triple oxygen isotopes of tooth enamel from Late Pleistocene Texas equids is helping us understand the water use ecology of these (recently) extinct megafauna, how they relate to co-existing taxa, and testing hypotheses surrounding the cause of their extinction. This important pilot dataset will also help set the stage for my next phase of postdoc research...more on that soon, so stay tuned!

We are so proud of Shahd's hard work and progress this summer, and are wishing her the best as she starts her senior year!

This month I will be attending the Goldschmidt Geochemical Society conference in Montreal, followed by the Earth Educators' Rendezvous hosted by the National Association of Geoscience Teachers in Columbia, SC!

I’m looking forward to connecting with old and new friends at each event. Send me a message if you will be attending either event and want to meet up!

Also, stop by my poster at Goldschmidt on Thursday afternoon (booth 420), where I will be sharing my new work focused on tooth enamel triple oxygen isotopes of Late Quaternary Texas mammals and implications for understanding water use ecology of extinct taxa. I'm very excited about the direction that this work is leading!

Our work on temperature and water stress records from Peru during the Holocene has been recognized as a top article in Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology! (based on citation metrics)

This article is available open access at DOI: 10.1029/2023PA004827

I am so excited to announce that Lauren Lopes (first year graduate student, Yale EPS) and I have made an offer to a summer intern through the Yale Peabody Museum EVOLUTIONS (Evoking Learning and Understanding Through Investigations of the Natural Sciences) program! EVOs provides New Haven public high school students the opportunity to participate in weekly after school programing through the Peabody during the academic year and sponsors paid summer internships for students. 

During the internship, our objective is to introduce the student to all aspects of the scientific process, from selecting and analyzing samples using chemical approaches, to reading literature, performing data analysis & coding, and presenting a research poster to our lab group and at the EVOs symposium. We'll also be sure to tailor aspects of the research design to best-suit the student's interests and career goals.

This will be my second summer serving as a scientific mentor for the program and I am so excited to begin this June! Check out my June-July 2025 post for more information about Zohair's work as an EVO intern in the lab last summer!

Stop by Northeast GSA in Hartford, CT to check out my current research! I hope to see you there!

Sunday March 22, 2026 at 3:50 PM in Room 27: Detrital Contributions to Lake Junín (Peru) During Glacial Periods Revealed by Clumped Isotopes: Application of a Two-Point Δ47 Mixing Model to Mixed-Source Carbonate and Implications for Isotope-Based Paleoclimate Reconstructions. Abstract

Tuesday March 24, 2026 at 8 AM-12 PM in Ballroom C: Evidence of Increasing Aridification in the Southern United States since the Last Glacial: Leveraging Advances in Tooth Enamel Triple Oxygen Isotopes and Revisiting Paleontological and Archaeological Collections. Abstract

This semester I'm excited to be participating in a few teaching workshops through the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. I find these sessions so helpful for considering my teaching approach and having time to intentionally cultivate my values as an educator. In addition, it's great to discuss teaching strategies and educational research with other program participants from diverse departments across campus! Seminars that I have attended or will attend this semester include Course Design (2 sessions), Teaching Quantitative Reasoning, and Teaching First-Generation Low-Income Students.