Donald Penman

Don Penman holds a bachelor’s degree in Geology from Carleton College, and a PhD from UC Santa Cruz. His dissertation used the geochemistry of marine sediments to probe the ocean’s carbonate chemistry response to rapid carbon injection with advisor Jim Zachos. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University before joining the Department of Geosciences at Utah State University as an Assistant Professor in 2020. Much of Don’s research uses materials from the seafloor recovered by scientific ocean drilling. He has sailed on three International Ocean Discovery Project (IODP) expeditions as shipboard scientist. Don measures the isotopic and trace-metal chemistry of these deep-sea sediments to probe interactions between climate and geochemical cycling during ancient Earth System perturbations. Of particular interest are periods and events in Earth history with climates much warmer than today’s, including an ancient interval of global warming known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Understanding the dynamics of climate, biogeochemical cycling, and earth’s carbon cycle in these ancient warm periods can help us understand how the Earth System will respond to the warm conditions projected for coming centuries under anthropogenic climate change.