POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLAR

Interests: Sea level, ice sheets, permafrost, ocean circulation, coastal evolution, sedimentology, probabilistic methods, scalable open-source computing

Roger is a geophysicist who focuses on sea-level change in the past and future and the interactions between sea level and ice sheets, coastlines, permafrost, and continental hydrology.  Roger’s work in geoscience began at Amherst College, where he wrote a thesis on diagenesis and dolomitization in Ordovician-Silurian carbonates in the Great Basin.  After Amherst, he conducted geochemical and sedimentological research at MIT and Washington University in Saint Louis while dancing professionally with the Louisville Ballet. In 2018, he began a PhD at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory with Dr. Jacqueline Austermann.  Roger’s research at Columbia concerned sea-level change during past warm periods, how sea level affects subsea permafrost, and what we can learn about ice sheet stability from sea-level records. He defended his dissertation in October 2023, then moved to WHOI to begin a postdoctoral scholarship.  At WHOI, Roger is studying how continental hydrology and human land use influence coastal ocean dynamic sea level, and the compound effects of sea-level, permafrost subsidence, and land hydrology on Arctic coastlines.

EDUCATION

• BA Geology and English; Amherst College (MA, USA) 2013
• MA Geophysics; Columbia University (NY, USA) 2021
• PhD Geophysics; Columbia University, 2023