|
Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences
Delta Dispatch
|
|
|
In his spring 2026 letter, Chair Kyle M. Straub celebrates a year of community and achievement in EES, highlighting a strong departmental presence at the AGU Annual Meeting in New Orleans, spring gatherings like the ice cream social and swamp tour, standout undergraduate senior theses, cross-campus initiatives in space science, resilient habitats, and energy, and the hiring of incoming faculty member Dr. Tianze Liu. Read the full letter from the chair.
|
|
|
Faculty Spotlight: Daniel A. Friess, Ph.D. |
Cochran Family Professor Daniel A. Friess leads the Mangrove Lab, studying how coastal wetlands like mangrove forests store carbon and support the communities who depend on them. Since joining EES in 2023, his team has expanded its research from Southeast Asia into the Americas, from arid-zone mangroves in Baja California Sur to marsh ecosystems in the Mississippi Delta, combining remote sensing, fieldwork, and policy partnerships to advance coastal conservation.
|
|
| |
|
|
Graduate Student Spotlight: Alan Braeley |
Ph.D. candidate and 2025 Vokes Graduate Fellowship winner Alan Braeley studies the ice caps of Mars, using radar data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to trace how the planet's shifting axial tilt has shaped its climate history. Working with Professor Jennifer Whitten, his dissertation examines both polar ice caps and a mysterious "foggy" radar signal, building on a winding path that took him from astronomy and software engineering into planetary science.
|
|
|
|
Tulane geoscientist Cynthia Ebinger elected to National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences |
Cynthia "Cindy" Ebinger, who holds the Marshall-Heape Chair in Geology at Tulane's School of Science and Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, adding to her recent election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and last year's designation as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
|
|
| |
|
| Masters Thesis Defense: Britt Johnson |
9:30 a.m. - 12 p.m.
The Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Tulane University is pleased to announce the Master's Thesis Defense of Britt N. Johnson, Master's Candidate, advised by Dr. Yi Wang
|
|
|
|
| 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Explore the Earth and Environmental Sciences undergraduate program and see how students engage with cutting-edge research, real-world challenges, and career-building opportunities.
|
|
|
|
| Alumni Resume & Career Networking Event |
5 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Join the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences for an evening of professional development and networking with EES alumni.
|
|
|
|
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) was launched in June 2010 by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in strategic partnership with Nanoracks, LLC.
|
|
|
|
A team of EENS undergraduates competed in NASA's Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, designing real microgravity experiments for the International Space Station. Noa Aval, Brenden Findlay, and Nam Joshua Nguyen earned a flight slot to study coacervates and the origins of life in weightlessness, while two more student teams researching lunar cement and fungal growth in microgravity earned national Honorable Mention recognition. Read complete article here.
|
|
|
|
Student Awards and Honors |
|
|
|
-
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences Announces 2026 Student Award Recipients — EENS honored its 2026 award winners for excellence in research, teaching, and service, recognizing undergraduates Meryl LaRue, Zachary Hom, Kristen Webster, and Claudia Miller, and graduate students Zoë Shribman, Eduardo Arzabala, and Kaetlyn Rodriguez.
- The Future of Farming in Orbit: Tulane Students Pitch Fungi for the ISS — Students proposed a NASA experiment on how microgravity affects fungal growth, aiming to use mycelium networks to make space agriculture more sustainable.
-
Building the Future on the Moon: Tulane Students Pioneer Lunar Cement with NASA — Students are developing a pozzolanic cement from lunar regolith simulant that could cut construction material launch weight by up to 80%.
-
EENS Senior Meryl LaRue Wins Best-in-Show for Chocó Rainforest Carbon Research — Senior Meryl LaRue won Best-in-Show at Newcomb-Tulane College's Research and Idea Symposium for her field study on agroforestry's effects on carbon stocks in Ecuador's Chocó Rainforest.
-
Kaetlyn Rodriguez Named 2025–2027 Science Policy and Communications Graduate Fellow at CPPR — PhD student Kaetlyn Rodriguez joined the Murphy Institute's Center for Public Policy Research fellowship, which trains scientists to communicate research to policymakers and the public.
|
|
|
|
EENS Alumni Spotlight: Emily Chin, BS ‘08 |
Emily Chin earned her BS in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Tulane in 2008 before going on to a PhD at Rice University and a postdoc at Brown. Today she's an associate professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography / UC San Diego. In this alumni spotlight, she reflects on how Tulane's petrology and mineralogy courses first sparked her fascination with rocks and minerals, the close-knit community she found within her department, and her advice for current students: stay curious, explore electives outside your comfort zone, and seek out undergraduate research and fieldwork opportunities.
|
|
| |
|
| EENS Alumni Spotlight: Anabel Kadri (BS 2025) |
Anabel Kadri graduated from Tulane's Earth and Environmental Sciences program in 2025 and has since built a career in coastal restoration, first as a field technician with Mass Audubon on a large salt marsh restoration project in Massachusetts, and now as a program assistant supporting restoration grants for the Chesapeake Bay Trust. In this alumni spotlight, she recalls a memorable rafting trip through the Grand Canyon as part of a course, hands-on fieldwork studying greenhouse gas emissions on Louisiana's barrier islands, and her advice for current students: get involved in research, build relationships with faculty, and seize every opportunity to learn outside the classroom.
|
|
|
|
Manage your preferences | Opt Out using TrueRemove™
Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails.
View this email online.
|
101 Walter E. Blessey Hall, 6823 St. Charles Avenue | New Orleans, LA 70118 US
|
|
|
|
This email was sent to .
To continue receiving our emails, add us to your address book.
|
|
|
|
