Alumni

Dave Pollard
Dave is interested in numerical modeling of the Earth’s climate, including 3-D atmospheric and ocean dynamics, ice sheets and vegetation. He works mostly on paleoclimates, long-term ice sheet variations, and past vegetation-climate feedbacks. He has been at Penn State since 1997, when he moved from the National Center for Atmospheric Research after helping to develop the GENESIS Global Climate Model. Recently he has worked more on ice sheet models, coupling them with global and regional climate models and applying them to Antarctica.

Maeva Pourpoint
Maeva is a fourth year PhD student, who comes to us from an engineering background. She is interested in seismic tomography as well as location and source parameterization of seismic events. She is currently working with regional and teleseismic events recorded by the GLISN network to invert for the crustal and upper mantle structure beneath Greenland. Some of the goals of this project are to constrain the source of a high geothermal heat flux observed in northeast Greenland, provide valuable information about the geology within Greenland’s continental margin and obtain relatively accurate velocity and density profiles of Greenland’s lithosphere that could be used to invert other dataset such as gravity data.

Knut Christianson
Knut is at the University of Washington in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences. His research focuses on integrating field and remote sensing data of ice sheets into models to improve simulations of past and future climate change. His models ultimately allow implementation of sensible climate change mitigation strategies.

Tarun Luthra
Tarun received his Ph.D. in Geosciences in 2017. He used geophysical methods to research the influence of sticky spots on ice stream dynamics. Currently, Tarun is working as a Senior Data Scientist at Insurdata. He employs machine learning techniques on geospatial datasets to assess the risk posed by various natural catastrophes on urban infrastructure.

Don Voigt
Don is a Senior Research Assistant in Geosciences. His background is in Mineralogy with training at Old Dominion University and Penn State. With multiple years in Antarctica and Greenland on more projects than he can remember, Don landed at the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project as Chief Scientist for the 2011–12 and 2012–13 field seasons. On the science side, Don studies the c-axis fabric of the ice as part of the study of the physical properties of the WAIS Divide core. Cycling, backpacking, X-country skiing, field hockey and family occupy Don’s spare time when at home.

John Leeman
John Leeman is a meteorologist and geophysicist that worked in the rock deformation and earthquake physics fields at PSU, getting involved with the ice group studying ice streams and how their dynamics are similar to slow slip earthquakes. John currently runs a company, based in northwest Arkansas, producing custom scientific instrumentation and software to help researchers.

John M. Fegyveresi
I am a glaciologist and climate scientist specializing in the analysis and interpretation of ice cores and polar ice sheets, using direct field measurements, thin-section and micro-CT analyses, ice-core gas extraction, and numerical modeling. I am most drawn to research questions that address how the physical and chemical properties of ice can be used to:

• • Model past climates in polar regions
  • Quantify ice-sheet deformation and strain history
  • Better constrain bubble trapping in polar firn.
  • Develop new proxies for reconstructing paleo-conditions on ice sheets.

My current primary role is in directing the Climate Science MS Program at Northern Arizona University.