Dr. Matthew McCarthy
Lab PI (the Big Kahuna)
Matt received his BS from UC San Diego’s Rodger Revelle College in 1987, in Chemistry and biochemistry. He then worked for 2 years in France at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s marine pollution studies lab (Monaco) as a marine analytical chemist, before returning for a PhD at the University of Washington, in Seattle, with John Hedges. Following post-doctoral positions at Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie (Paris) with Claude Largeau, the Carnegie Institution (Washington DC) with Marilyn Fogel, and University of Hawaii (SOEST Young Investigator award), he joined the faculty of the Ocean Sciences department at UCSC in 2001.
Over the last 20 yrs Matt has established a research program focused on developing new molecular isotope approaches to understanding ocean biogeochemisty, ecological cycles, and reconstructing the ocean’s past. His lab research group consists a fantastic group of graduate students, postdocs, undergraduate researchers and visitors, all overseen by lab manager Stephanie Christensen, and regularly convenes for lab meetings at favored local establishments to swap ideas and stories over a good brew. Matt regularly teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses, and has been active in campus leadership around undergraduate teaching issues.
Stephanie Christensen
Lab Manager, Research Specialist
Stephanie came to UCSC from Hawaii, where she had previously worked in the Oceanography department of the University of Hawaii for many years. There she gained a background in sample analysis methods and analytical instrumentation, particularly HPLC and LC-MS. She joined the McCarthy lab in early 2016 as an associate research specialist, quickly acquiring an education in the care and feeding of GC-IRMS instrumentation. Steph manages day to day lab activities, and trains graduate students and visiting researchers in CSIA-AA and other lab and instrument protocols. She also spends much of her time running samples and troubleshooting (!) the various lab instruments. Outside of work, Steph enjoys playing racquetball, running, reading, and hiking.
Danielle Glynn
PhD Student - (Soon to be Dr. Glynn! )
Danielle Glynn is a scientist studying how ocean ecosystems are changing with climate using the chemistry recorded in deep sea corals. She received a bachelors in Earth System Science from UC Irvine where she spent three years in a radiocarbon lab working with corals. For her senior project she examined the signal of nuclear bomb fallout which was quickly integrated into a coral in the eastern tropical Pacific, noticeable through radiocarbon analysis. Then upon entering graduate school at UC Santa Cruz, she continued studying corals, only in this case the deep sea variety, which record within their growth layers the signal of nutrients and phytoplankton in the waters above. Her PhD projects allowed her to send robots into the deep sea and involved a variety of drilling, weighing, and analytical techniques required to turn coral skeletons into amino acids in order to measure isotopic information. Current projects are aimed at studying the degradation of coral skeletons over millennia and creating paleoclimate records of the Central Equatorial Pacific Ocean as well as near the Hawaiian Islands to figure out how open ocean ecosystems have been changing over the last hundreds to thousands of years.
Hope Ianiri
PhD Student ; soon to be "Dr. Ianiri"!
Hope is a PhD student graduating in 2021, planning to move to a research/postdoc position at US Geological Survey. She came to UCSC from New England, where she grew up in CT and attended college at Northeastern University. Her undergraduate degree is in chemistry, with minors in Environmental Studies and Spanish. Her dissertation research combines her interests in analytical chemistry and the environment by focusing on marine biogeochemical cycles. Specifically, her thesis aims to address why organic carbon and nitrogen persist in the deep ocean for thousands of years. The accumulation of these compounds, termed dissolved organic matter (DOM), has huge implications for how much carbon will be stored in the ocean. In her free time, Hope enjoys hiking, rock climbing, and snowboarding. To find out more about Hope and her research, visit her website.
Natasha Vokhshoori
PhD Student; soon to be "Dr. Vokhshoori" ! Congratulations on best student paper award , GSA 2021!
Natasha is finishing her PhD in 2021, and moving to a Post Doc at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Natasha's research interests are in ecosystem geochemistry, environmental change and marine ecology. With these interests, she is using novel bioarchives and isotopic tools (bulk and CSIA) to unveil the productivity of marine ecosystem in otherwise inaccessible environments such as the deep-sea and the geologic past. For her dissertation work, Natasha has extended collaborations with Archaeologists and Ecologists to use archaeological shell middens to reconstruct nearshore productivity and understand how climatic biogeochemical shifts have impacted coastal food webs. Natasha is also working with the USGS to study chemosynthetic mussels from deep sea methane seep environments to characterize the role of nitrogen in this food web. Outreach services that Natasha is involved with include, advising two undergraduate students on independent Senior Thesis projects, served as Graduate Student Representative for her department where she spearheaded writing a Graduate Student Handbook and started several community-oriented functions that are still ongoing, and finally is an active member of the graduate student group CORE that hosts monthly/quarterly events to enhance communication and inclusivity in the sciences. Check out their website (core.ucsc.edu) and blog (coreblog.sites.ucsc.edu)Natasha's website
Research Gate
Google Scholar
Eve Pugsley
PhD Student
Eve joined the McCarthy lab in 2018 after finishing her BS in Environmental Geology and Psychology at the College of William and Mary in VA. Her research interests include both past and present biogeochemistry, particularly links between climate and marine ecosystems. She is currently working on a project to reconstruct recent-past planktic ecosystem changes on the central California margin by applying compound-specific amino acid isotope analysis to deep-sea coral skeletons. Outside of work, she enjoys surfing, hiking, cooking and enjoying the natural beauty of Santa Cruz.
Beryl DeLong
PhD Student
I love science for the same reason I love art, poetry, and travel: because it opens our eyes to a new perspective with which to understand the world. Currently, I am learning how to see the world through the eyes of polar marine diatoms. I am earning my PhD at the University of California Santa Cruz, where I am working with Christina Ravelo and Matt McCarthy to investigate interactions between marine biogeochemical cycling and the climate system. My current research uses a variety of techniques including foraminifera δ18O, nitrogen and silicon isotopes, and diatom community composition to measure various physical, chemical, and ecological parameters of the ocean-climate system. My previous research at UNC-Chapel Hill and the University of New Hampshire includes marine microbial ecology, diatom physiology, and climate reconstruction. Find out more at my personal website.
Ily Iglesias PhD Student
Ily Iglesias is a current PhD student in the Ocean Sciences department at UCSC and a graduate student researcher at NOAA, Southwest Fisheries Science Center. Ily uses techniques in fisheries acoustics, stable isotope analysis, and regional ocean modeling to elucidate the extent to which mesopelagic organisms (with a focus on fishes living between 200-1000m deep) respond to dynamic oceanographic processes within the California Current. In particular, her work focuses on whether anomalous oceanographic conditions along the coast, including warming surface temperatures and decreasing oxygen, have led to shifts in the distribution, trophic ecology and mercury loading of mesopelagic fishes. This research is important because mesopelagic organisms are vital in supporting healthy food webs (they are consumed by many commercially important fish such as tuna and salmon), and for sequestering carbon in the deep sea. However, it is currently unclear how climate change may impact the mesopelagic zone and its diverse denizens.
Taylor Broek
Post doc at LLNL
Taylor is the most recent graduate of the lab group, receiving his PhD in 2019. He is now working as a post doctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL), but is still an active participant in lab group activities.
When asked for a bio for this web page, Taylor suggested "survived grad school".
Yuan Shen
Now; assistant professor, Xiamen University
Yuan Shen is a recently departed postdoc, still active in lab publications and projects.
Here is a marine biogeochemist interested in questions related to organic biogeochemistry in the changing ocean. I received my PhD degree in 2017 at the University of South Carolina, where I developed and applied amino acid-based indicators to study the origin and reactivity of dissolved organic matter in the open ocean and polar regions. Shortly after I graduated, I was fortunate to become a postdoc at UCSC working with Drs. Matthew McCarthy and Thomas Guilderson on an NSF funded project. In this project, we applied compound-specific amino acid isotope analysis (CSI-AA) to marine sinking particles and deep-sea bamboo corals in California margin to achieve three objectives: 1) to test fundamental assumptions underlying the rapidly evolving applications of CSI-AA in paleoceanographic studies, 2) to develop empirical models for estimating bulk C and N isotope values of plankton production from the CSI-AA baseline proxies, and 3) finally to reconstruct high‑resolution centennial ecosystem changes in the California Current System from coral amino acid d13C and d15N records. The past three years working with Matt, Tom and all other amazing colleagues in the group have been a fantastic and memorable time in my life.
Yuan is now at a new faculty position at Xiamen University in China, where he continues to exploit organic molecules and their stable isotopes as powerful tools to understand biogeochemical and ecological dynamics in the modern and past oceans.
Brett Tipple
Isotope entrepreneur/ Project scientist
Brett is a geochemist who investigates the connections and interactions between the bio-, hydro-, and geospheres on human and longer timescales through the measurement of isotope ratios. Areas of specific interest include quantifying water fluxes in managed and natural systems, applying isotopes to societal questions, tracing lipid biochemistry, evaluating the environmental signals recorded in organic compounds, and applying these isotopic signatures to reconstruct past climates and conditions. Brett's research website.
Brett is moving on from UCSC in 2021, to focus on his own stable isotope company.