Hot Summer Days Ignite Scientific Minds
As temperatures soared in July to the hottest in Earth鈥檚 modern history, Emily Cepin toiled inside a 星空无限传媒 University lab gaining insights into today鈥檚 climate crisis by extracting pollen fossils from rock sediment formed 56 million years ago. The work is both tedious and timely.
Posted in: Department Research, Students
If we don鈥檛 do something soon, it鈥檚 going to be that much harder to overcome and it鈥檚 going to lead to severe and consequential events.
Cepin鈥檚 research looks at how plants and vegetation are changing today compared to a long ago extreme climate event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a geologic period of intense global warming. To analyze pollen from that period she removes minerals like carbonates and silicates from ancient rocks using a series of chemical reactions.
鈥淎nalyzing the pollen samples will allow me to understand how plants and vegetation responded to the PETM event and compare it to how plants are changing in response to the current climate crisis,鈥 explains Cepin, a senior Earth and Environmental Science major mentored by Assistant Professor Ying Cui.
Cepin鈥檚 research is among nearly 40 projects underway this summer conducted by Montclair undergraduate students. The student researchers are tackling some of the world鈥檚 toughest scientific and engineering challenges, everything from finding a cure for malaria to building technology for classrooms and protecting swimmers from jellyfish in the coastal bays of New Jersey.
Read more about the research Emily and others are doing this summer!