Our Lab

David Boutt is a professor in Geosciences at the UMass Amherst. He is a long time collaborator and brings a unique skill set to our team in the areas of computational hydrogeology and environmental tracers. He is the water brain behind all of our projects.

Daniel Ibarra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University. He has been collaborating with our team since his Ph.D. at Stanford University and brings his expertise in C-cycling, paleoclimatology and analytical geochemistry to our group. Dr. Ibarra's state of the art analytical geochemistry lab at Brown is extensively utilized by our researchers and students.

Zachary Redman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alaska Anchorage where he is also a major user of the ASET lab. He is an analytical environmental chemist specializing in the development of techniques to advance our understanding of environmental processes and the characterization of natural organic matter.

Kristina Butler graduated from the UAA Deparment of Geological Sciences in 2017. She is currently a post-doc in Dr. Daniel Ibarra's lab at Brown University and will begin as an Assistant Professor in Geosciences at UT Dallas in spring 2024. Her work is focused on paleoelevation and paleoclimate reconstructions for the Miocene-present Atacama Desert in northern Chile. This work has implication for the accumulation of world class lithium brine resources.

Jens Munk is a professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is an expert in subsurface investigations using a suite of shallow geophsyical methods. His contributions are vast from high latitude permafrost terranes to coastal aquifer characterization. He says he just likes the math but really he likes helping us provide critical climate change solutions. 

Sean Regan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His reserch is focused on advanding the understanding of Earth tectonic processes through time. He is interested in  research questions around REE deposit formation and constraining metamorphic and metasomatic processes by in-situ geochronology. He is the latest addition to our Lithium Solutions research group (photo credit Laura Crossey)

Brendan Moran is an early career researcher in the Lithium Solutions group and has been an integral part of the team’s many South American projects over the past 7 years. He is currently at Post-doc at UMass Amherst. Brendan specializes in the hydrogeology, hydrology and climatology of arid environments and salar (salt flat) systems. He combines physical hydrology, isotopic tracers (such as 3H age tracing) and remotely sensed land surface and climatology data to assess water sources, transport and interactions over time.

Sara McKnight is an early career researcher and Assistant Professor of Hydrogeology at the University of Dayton. She specializes in numerical modeling and density-driven flow applied to freshwater-brine systems in the Altiplano-Puna Plateau of South America. She has also conducted arid hydrogeology work in the Middle East.

Lindsay Wienkers is an analytical chemist working full time in the ASET lab at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She has an M.S. in Biological Sceinces and an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science. She conducts analysis on environmental samples including ICP-MS, IC, HPLC, etc. Her role is key in our research projects for all of our analytical needs.