– MARCH 27, 2018
Jeanine Ash, a new Rice postdoctoral researcher and recipient of a Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI) fellowship, is the focus of a video about her duties as a member of the science party on the JOIDES Resolution, a research ship and part of the National Science Foundation-supported International Ocean Discovery Program.
Ash was part of Expedition 374, which spent 46 days at sea this year to study the evolution of the Ross Sea ice sheet off West Antarctica and the relationship between climatic and oceanic change through the Neogene and Quaternary periods, from 23 million years ago to the present day.
In the video, Ash describes her work to understand the balance between the massive amount of methane, a greenhouse gas, under the Antarctic seafloor and the microbes that consume it and keep it from escaping to the atmosphere, as well as the microbes’ susceptibility to climate change.
Ash recently joined the Rice lab of biogeochemist Caroline Masiello as a C-DEBI postdoctoral investigator and will continue her work to understand the metabolisms of methane makers and eaters in the deep biosphere. She previously worked with Rice Earth scientist Laurence Yeung at UCLA.
Masiello is a professor and Yeung is an assistant professor, both in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences.
