We are recruiting a PhD student to begin Fall 2024 to work on an exciting project in Curaçao. See below and reach out to Jessica if you are interested in applying.
October 2023
Jessica presented an online seminar for the Santa Cruz Museum on her research in Santa Cruz Mountains caves. You can watch it here.
September 2022
Our collaborative research with Dan Ibarra at Brown and Warren Sharp at Berkeley Geochronology Center was featured in this month’s issue of High Country News. You can read about our journey to set up an auto-sampler in Titan Cave here.
Climbing down in the the Pisa Room, Titan Cave, Wyoming.
April 2020
While staying home, Jessica gave a remote presentation to the TSU College of Agriculture. This was based on a series of workshops that she took part in through the TSU Extension program to discuss issues of climate change with Tennessee Agricultural Extension Agents.
March 2019
Elli Ronay’s new paper is out in Scientific Reports. In this contribution, we investigate the link between dry season rainfall and the PDO in NE India using trace element variations in a stalagmite from Mawmluh Cave. We find that dry season rainfall is an important driver of trace element variability in this stalagmite record of the last ~60 yrs, and suggest this may be an overlooked influence on stalagmite records from monsoon regions. You can read the Vanderbilt press release here.
January 2018
Jessica spoke with Michael White, climate science editor for the journal Nature on his podcast Forecast.
You can listen to the interview here.
August 2017
Jessica speaks about her recent paper on the 8.2 ka event on the radio program The Academic Minute. You can listen here.
Image of quartered and polished stalagmite WMC1. Numbers show ages and associated errors for uranimum-series dates on the stalagmite. Red numbers had larger errors and were not used in the final age model for the stalagmite proxy records. Image: J. Oster.
August 2016
Over the summer, Jessica received an NSF Early Career Development Award to continue work with coastal and Northern California speleothem records of the last deglaciation and the Holocene. You can read the VU press release here.
August 2015
Jessica is one of eight researchers form Vanderbilt to be named "Inspiring Women in STEM".
May 2015
Our paper based on Chris Myers' MS research just came out in Geophysical Research letters. You can read the Vanderbilt press release here.
Cameron de Wet in White Moon Cave, California. Photo credit: Theral Mackey.
September 2018
Jessica and colleagues from Vanderbilt and Tennessee State University are initiating a new NSF-funded program aimed at increasing diversity in the geosciences. You can read the press release here. The program, called Earth Horizons, will engage Environmental Science majors from TSU’s College of Agriculture to participate in hands-on and field-based learning experiences and paid research and community internships with several local partners. Please contact Jessica if you want to know more, or check out the Earth Horizon’s webpage!
June 2017
Our paper on a record of the 8.2 ka event from a coastal California speleothem is available in Nature: Scientific Reports. You can read the VU press release here.
September 2015
Our lab's research into the modern cave environment in Tennessee is featured on Vanderbilt News.
Theresa Miller (VU class of 2018) received an award for her poster presentation at the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Fair. Her poster describes collaborative work with Dr. Oster and Dr. Tiffiny Tung (VU Dept. of Anthropology) studying modern precipitation and surface water isotopes in Peru and applying that knowledge to the interpretation of oxygen isotopes in the teeth of ancient humans.
Elli Ronay doing cave science in a cave.
February, 2015
Our study of hydroclimate change at the Last Glacial Maximum has just come out in Nature Geoscience (with associated News and Views article) . You can read the press release and see a video about the research on the Vanderbilt Research page.
Chris Myers (VU MS 2014) and Sebastian Breitenbach (Cambridge) collect samples in India in 2012.