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About

Research Interests: 

Nick has spent ten years working in the upper Neogene section of Ocean Drillng Program Site 1208 in the northwest Pacific's Kuroshio Extension. He was first introduced to the site in 2003 as a UMass-Amherst undergraduate, where he worked with Mark Leckie to generate stable isotope records from multiple species of plankic and benthic foraminifers. As a Master's student with Mark (UMass-Amherst; 2006), he revised foraminiferal biostratigraphy for the northwest Pacific, using the site's excellent age control to date his biostratigraphy. He then went to the University of Delaware for his Ph.D. (2011), where with Katharina Billups he focused on the Plio-Pleistocene climate transition, using benthic foraminifer oxygen isotopes to tie the North Pacific into the global stratigraphy, and generating a multi-proxy (foraminifer oxygen isotopes, alkenones) sea surface reconstruction. The results suggested that Northern Hemisphere glaciations that began with the ancient climate transition may have had origins in the North Pacific. Nick continues to pursue new ways to investigate the vast and understudied region's role in ancient climate. Recently (fall 2012), he discovered a love for teaching through a physical geology survey course at Salem State University and hopes to build a portfolio of classes that complement his research interests in paleoceanography/paleoclimate and stratigraphy.