Gemma Sahwell

I am a PhD candidate in Geoscience at Princeton University and work in the Higgins Lab and Blue Lab at Princeton. I'm currently located in Boston, Mass. as I finish my dissertation and am looking for opeertunities in the applied sustainability sector. I am passionate about storytelling, science literacy, and hand crafts (both creating and admiring other's creations).  My newest interest is in sustainable agriculture and am currently interested in learning all that I can about farming in the US! 

I have spent the past 5 years studying the long term carbon cycle and have developed expertise in stable isotope geochemistry. More specifically, I study specific element systems in carbonate rocks from geologic history to assess whether or not those carbonates are faithful recorders of that element's presence in ancient seawater. Understanding the chemistry of ancient seawater gives us a window in to Earth's past - we can learn about different processes like how carbon cycled through the atmosphere and the rate of seafloor spreading (to name only 2 processes). 

As climate change has reached crisis-level status new companies, governments, and universities are investing a lot of money and other resources in to something called Carbon Dioxide Removal technologies (CDR). This is a type of geoengineering that attempts to take carbon dioxide out of our atmophere and sequester it elsewhere (sometimes in rocks, sometimes in the ocean).  This type of technology can only work if we have a good understanding of the carbon cycle on short and long term time scales - that is where my work comes in.  I believe that keeping up to date on the tech behind the carbon market as well as having a deep understanding of Earth Science is important to successful decision making in the sustainability sector. That is what excites me most moving forward after the PhD and I hope to make some difference in my future work.