Lamont-Doherty Scientists Receive Major Honors – State of the Planet

Three scientists at the Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have been honored by major scientific organizations.

The American Geophysical Union has recognized Kerstin Lehnert with the Edward A. Flinn III Award. As longtime director of Lamont’s Geoinformatics group, Lehnert has worked for decades to develop innovative cyberinfrastructure that integrates geochemical and petrological data on many kinds of scientific samples from the Earth and makes it available to all online. Most recently, the group was tasked by NASA to track down, digitize and make accessible all geochemical data from past, current and future NASA missions. AGU says, “This award is for the unsung heroes who provide the ideas, motivation, and labors of love that build and maintain the infrastructure without which our science could not flourish.” Lehnert was cited “for groundbreaking leadership in developing and maintaining critical scientific data infrastructures and promoting FAIR [Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability] data practices.”

Dhruv Balwada, an assistant research professor in the ocean and climate physics division, has received the American Meteorological Association’s Nicholas P. Fofonoff Award. The award is given to an early-career researcher in recognition of achievement in physical oceanography. Balwada’s work focuses on understanding how swirling flows of ocean waters stir, mix and transport materials at scales of 100 meters to 100 kilometers—processes that influence the Earth’s climate, and control the rhythms of oceanic and coastal ecosystems. Balwada was cited “for fundamental work characterizing tracer transport and energy transfers between mesoscale and submesoscale ocean flows.”

Geochemist Gisela Winckler has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, section of atmospheric and hydrospheric sciences. AAAS, one of the world’s largest scientific societies, bestows this lifetime honor on scientists who have made long-term contributions in a wide variety of fields. Winckler has long been a leader in paleoceanography, studying climate and environmental change on timescales ranging from decades to tens of millions of years. Her research uses climate archives such as deep-sea sediments, lake sediments and ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. One of her recent high-profile studies revealed the long-term interplay of climate and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the Earth’s largest and most consequential mover of water.