Meet the team — we are based in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia
Staff
Jon Woodhead
Jon is an isotope geochemist who does quite a bit of geochronology. He specialises in U-Pb dating of older speleothems - those beyond the range of the U-Th chronometer - in studies of palaeoclimate, human origins, landscape evolution and biodiversity.
Google Scholar profile here
Pursuit articles here
Email Jon
Twitter: @IsotopeDude
Russell Drysdale
Russ is a stable isotope geochemist and speleothem specialist working on Quaternary palaeoclimates. He is currently involved in speleothem projects in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, French Polynesia, Italy, and France. His has specific interests in applying speleothem science to the timing and forcing of glacial terminations, interglacial variability, and the geographic expression of millennial-scale climate events.
Google Scholar profile here
Email Russ
Helen Green
Helen did her PhD studies on the cave deposits of Victoria, Australia. She is currently doing a post-doc developing U-Th protocols for dating Kimberley rock art.
Email Helen
Isabelle Couchoud
Isabelle is a member of the EDYTEM lab at the Universite Savoie-Mont Blanc and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
PhD, MSc and Hons students
Ellen Corrick
Ellen began her PhD in late 2015, further exploring her interest in millennial-scale climate change. Her research explore the consistency to which globally distributed speleothems record the rapid Dansgaard-Oeschger events that characterised the last glacial period.
Bianca Dickson
Bianca is doing her PhD looking at pollen in speleothems from SouthWest Australia, a unique floristic region and biodiversity hotspot.
John Engel
John (aka Captain America) has returned to Melbourne Uni, where he did his MSc, to start a PhD aimed at further developing chronometers for speleothems beyond the range of U-series dating.
Kia Matley
Kia is looking at the late Holocene speleothem palynology of the Nullarbor Plain
Claire MacGregor
Claire is doing a PhD on millennial-scale climate variations recorded in speleothems
Safana Sellman
Safana has just (2020) graduated from her PhD on the Pliocene speleothems of the Nullarbor region of southwest Australia. Congratulations Safana!
Tim Pollard
Tim’s PhD project aims to produce precisely dated speleothem records of climate and environmental change during the Marine Isotope Stage 11 interglacial - a time when Earth’s orbital characteristics were similar to the present, thus providing a potential analogue for future evolution of the climate system over an orbital timescale.
Rieneke Weij
Rieneke’s PhD project aims to investigate the use of speleothem age probability density functions as a palaeoprecipitation proxy.
Lab Managers
Roland Maas
Roland looks after two of the three Clean Labs in Earth Sciences (including the one where U-Th chemistry happens) and one of our MC-ICPMS instruments (Nu007, licensed to thrill)
Alan Greig
Alan runs the Agilent 7700 quad ICPMS and ASI RESOlution laser ablation systems in Earth Sciences. Here he is seen saying goodbye to an old 'friend' (that's why he is smiling).