Q&A with Sarah Ivory, assistant professor
What attracted you the field? I actually never imagined being a scientist when I was a kid. My first career aspiration was to be a poet. I spent most of my teenage years wandering around my town in northern Wisconsin or writing under a big tree by the Chippewa River. At that point in my life, I appreciated the beauty of plants but took it for granted that they had names and were all different. I ended up being attracted to the field when a desire to be more descriptive of landscapes led me to try and figure out what the plants I was writing about were called. That was a rabbit hole that I still haven’t come out of.
What is your educational background? I earned my bachelor’s degree from a small university in my hometown, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. I actually got a B.S. in botany and French and worked in France in a research lab for a while after graduating. I
then earned my Ph.D. in geosciences at the University of Arizona. I started graduate school having never taken a geology course. There was a lot of catch-up, but my background ended up being a great asset, because geology and biology are so tightly linked.
What are your research interests? I am interested in better understanding how vegetation—individual plants and communities—respond to changes in climate throughout the Quaternary. Also, I am interested in how humans have altered the environment through time and how the environment has shaped humanity. In order to do this, I use plant fossils, especially pollen from flowers to reconstruct ancient vegetation.
Why did you choose Penn State? Penn State is such a great place to be a young scientist. You get to work alongside some of the smartest people in the world, and you get the sense that everyone genuinely wants you to be successful. Also coming from a background that is sort of between disciplines, Penn State really fosters collaboration and relationship-building across colleges and the University itself. I really appreciate that mentality.
Jesse Reimink, assistant professor
Originally from the great state of Michigan, I grew up as the eldest son of two public school teachers, who instilled in me a deep appreciation for academic, athletic, and educational pursuits. For my undergraduate studies, I attended Hope College, a small liberal arts college, where I majored in geology and played basketball, a sport that remains a major part of my life. After graduating, I started in an M.Sc. program at the University of Alberta, focused on mapping and geochemistry within the Acasta Gneiss Complex, Northwest Territories, Canada, which evolved into a Ph.D. project that I completed in 2015.
My father was a high school biology teacher, who worked on research programs involving schistosome parasites in lakes in northern Michigan. I was raised around science and the outdoors to the extent that I thought to pursue biology like my father. However, in ninth grade I took the required Earth science course, taught by Chris Bolhuis, an incredibly dynamic educator who won the 2013 Earth Science Teacher of the Year award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. This course, combined with his geology course that I took in eleventh grade, set me down the path toward Earth science as a profession.
I became interested in geochemistry during my undergraduate studies when I worked as a research assistant for two summers studying copper-mineralizing fluids in the Midcontinent Rift and mapping high-grade gneiss terrane in the Sveconorwegian orogeny exposed in Sweden. This translated nicely to my work in the Northwest Territories that used mapping and geochemistry to evaluate the origins of continental crust in deep time.
Before coming to Penn State, I was a postdoctoral fellow for three years at the Carnegie Institution for Science in their Department of Terrestrial Magnetism., where I continued to work on early crust formation and various problems related to the early Earth.
Recently, I have started to work on a technique-development project that, if successful, will improve mass spectrometry techniques used by a wide variety of analyses in the fields of geochemistry, geochronology, and nuclear forensics.
I am incredibly honored and excited to be a part of the Penn State’s Department of Geosciences and remain sufficiently intimidated and motivated by the prospect of joining such a prestigious program. I plan to continue to work on early Earth geochemistry problems and hope to assist in bringing new analytical facilities to the department while contributing to the broader goal of geosciences education.