Commencement 2025 Roundup: Degrees Earned
New PhDs Hilary Chang, Brindha Kanniah, and Ishir Dutta pose with their diplomas at the reception following the School of Science advanced degree ceremony which kickstarted commencement week for EAPS on Wednesday, May 28. The week's festivities were capped off with a department-wide celebration in the Moghadam Building atrium on Friday, May 30 after the MIT undergraduate degree conferral in Killian Court. Photo credit: Steph Stevens
Each year, students from EAPS and the MIT-WHOI Joint Program turn in an impressive array of planetary and geoscience research, helping to advance human understanding of the natural world. In addition, this year saw the first three degrees granted from Course 1-12, our new joint major in Climate System Science and Engineering offered by EAPS and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
We’re proud to share this list of degrees earned during the 2024-2025 academic year as we watch our graduates launch into bright career futures! Congratulations, all!
Be sure to also check out our photo gallery from the commencement week festivities!
| Student | Degree | Advised By | Thesis Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lauren S. Aguilar | SB | Taylor Perron (Academics) | Course 1-12 Capstone Group Project |
| Noah Trawicki Anderson | PhD | Kristin Bergmann | Multi-Proxy Records of Climate and Carbon Cycle Perturbations in the Paleozoic: Integrating Isotope Geochemistry and Sedimentology |
| Matthew Joseph Baldes | PhD | Tanja Bosak | Organic Influences on the Formation of Hydrated Magnesium Carbonates |
| Alexander Y. Bean | SB | Taylor Perron (Academics) | Course 1-12 Capstone Group Project |
| Brenna L. Boehman | PhD* | Valier Galy (WHOI) | Mechanisms of terrestrial organic carbon export and preservation in the marine environment |
| Lucy C. Brock | SB | Mick Follows (Academics) Raffaele Ferrari (Thesis) | Modeling Mesoscale Eddies: The Effects of Resolution on Ocean Turbulence |
| Emma Jacqueline Bullock | PhD* | Matthew Charette (WHOI) | Radium and Mercury Dynamics in the Arctic: Investigating Terrestrial Inputs, Groundwater Discharge and Chemical Cycling in a Changing Climate |
| Rina Cao | SB | Glenn Flierl (Academics) Brent Minchew (Thesis) | Bridging Simple Models and Observations of the Flexure Zone Around Antarctica |
| Hilary Chang | PhD | Nori Nakata | Characterizing microearthquakes and shallow structure with dense array and optical fibers |
| Jinshi Chen | PhD* | Britt Raubenheimer (WHOI) Steve Elgar (WHOI) | Cross Surfzone Transport Dynamics by Random Breaking Waves |
| Abigail Marie Colclasure | SM | Michael Person | First Visible Wavelength Lightcurves for the Northern Hemispheres of Titania and Oberon |
| Rola Dbouk | PhD | Jack Wisdom | Tidal Evolution of Planetary Satellites: Implications for Jupiter’s and Saturn’s Obliquities and Titan’s Climate |
| Ishir Dutta | PhD | Colette Heald | The Changing Role of Reactive Nitrogen in the Troposphere |
| Andy Fong | SB | Shuhei Ono (Academics & Thesis) | Investigation of Ex-Situ Carbon Mineralization Fundamentals and Scalability in Wet Supercritical Carbon Dioxide |
| Markey R. Freudenburg-Puricelli | SB | Kristin Bergmann (Academics & Thesis) | Triple Oxygen Isotope Measurements in Chert: Insights into the Snowball Earth Glaciations |
| Kayla Grace Gardner | PhD* | Simon Thorrold (WHOI) | Carbon Flow and Food Web Structure in the Mesopelagic Zone of the North Atlantic Ocean |
| Alan Gaul | PhD* | Gordon Zhang (WHOI) Claudia Cenedese (WHOI) | The Influence of Topography on Ice-Ocean Interactions in Coastal Antarctica |
| David Edward Geller-McGrath | PhD* | Ginny Edgcomb (WHOI) | Characterization of Microbial Primary and Secondary Metabolism in the Marine Realm |
| Ryan J. Gray | SB | Tanja Bosak (Academics & Thesis) | Lateral Transfer of DNA in Protocell-like Synthetic Cell |
| Kathryn Hunter Halloran | PhD* | Liz Kujawinski (WHOI) | Molecular Characterization of Microbial Interactions with Labile Dissolved Organic Matter |
| Fatima Husain | PhD | Roger Summons | Geochemical and Phylogenomic Investigations of Life in Deep Time |
| Alexandra E Jones-Kellett | PhD* | Mick Follows | A Lagrangian perspective of mesoscale biophysical interactions in the subtropical ocean |
| Brindha Kanniah | PhD | Laurent Demanet | Shifting Paradigms: Data-Centric Approach for Marine Statics Correction Using Symmetric Autoencoding |
| Rory Knight | SB | Michael Person (Academics) David McGee (Thesis) | Paleo-aridity Records Investigated Through Drip Water Chemistry in Lehman Caves, Nevada |
| Arianna Krinos Quinn | PhD* | Mick Follows | Decoding Divergence in Marine Protistan Communities: From Strain Diversity to Basin Biogeography |
| Koko T. Kummel | SB | Susan Solomon (Academics) Dara Entekhabi (Thesis) | Method for Recharge and Sustainable Groundwater Use Estimation Using Soil Moisture Time-Series Analysis |
| Zifan Lin | PhD | Sara Seager | Reducing the compositional and structural degeneracy of planetary interiors |
| Glenn Yu-Zu Liu | PhD* | Young-Oh Kwon (WHOI) | Investigating the Atmospheric and Oceanic Drivers of Atlantic Multidecadal Variability and Predictability |
| Christian Michael Mier | SM* | Claudia Cenedese (WHOI) | Cross-Shelf Exchange Driven by Dense Flow Down a Canyon |
| Joshua Murray | PhD | Oli Jagoutz | Ultramafic Alteration and the Cooling of Earth and Mars |
| Anika Nath | SB | Richard Teague (Academics) Chris Hill (Thesis) | Modeling Non-Rotational Ocean Circulation and Heat Distribution in Icy Moons |
| Daina M. Neithardt | SB | Taylor Perron (Academics) Ryan Woosley (Thesis) | Monitoring Anthropogenic Carbon in Cape Cod Bay |
| Maurielle Noto | SB | Michael Person (Academics) Richard Teague (Thesis) | Modeling Exomoon Formation in Circumplanetary Disks Using DustPy |
| Daniel Ortega-Arroyo | PhD | Matěj Peč | Principal Slip Zones in Nature and Experiment and Their Role in the Earthquake Cycle |
| Jack Goodspeed Payette | SM | Greg Fournier | The Archean origin of assimilatory sulfate metabolisms provides novel insight into redox conditions of early Earth environments |
| Ananda Tereza Santos Figueiredo | SB | Susan Solomon (Academics) | Course 1-12 Capstone Group Project |
| Cassandra Seltzer | PhD | Matěj Peč | Deformation and its Surface Expression in Stressed Planetary Materials |
| Iulia-Madalina Streanga | PhD* | Daniel Repeta (WHOI) Tristan Horner (WHOI) | Marine iodine biogeochemistry: inorganic speciation, redox dynamics and organic complexation |
| Lina Taenzer | PhD* | Colleen Hansel (WHOI) Scott Wankel (WHOI) | Observations and Implications of ROS in Marine Systems |
| Lukas L. Taenzer | PhD* | Glen Gawarkiewicz (WHOI) Albert Plueddemann (WHOI) | Cross-Frontal Exchange at the US Northeast Shelfbreak |
| Erik Tamre | PhD | Greg Fournier | Studies in Biotic Persistence and the Taxonomic Stability of Traits Over Geological Time |
| Benjamin Hayden Tiger | PhD* | David McGee | On the external forcing of Indian Ocean climate variability across timescales |
| Shawnee Nicole Traylor | PhD* | David Nickolson (WHOI) | Tracking Carbon Fluxes Across Ocean Interfaces Using Dissolved Gas Observations |
| PJ Tuckman | PhD | John Marshall | Simple Models for Complex Tropical Dynamics |
| Sara Leslie Vianco | SM* | Nick Foukal (WHOI) | The Origins of the East Greenland Coastal Current on the Northeast Greenland Shelf: A Comparison of Two Reanalysis Products |
| Peidong Wang | PhD | Susan Solomon | Understanding Drivers of Stratospheric Ozone Change and Fingerprinting its Recovery |
| Shouyi Wang | PhD* | Caroline Ummenhofer (WHOI) | Decadal to centennial-scale climate interactions across the Indo-Pacific region |
| Jane Bradford Weinstock | PhD* | Jesús Pineda (WHOI) | Reproduction, settlement, and phenology of intertidal barnacles: Implications for larval dispersal |
| Sarah Elizabeth Wells-Moran | SM | Brent Minchew | Putting Lipstick on a PIG: Modeling Pine Island Glacier (PIG) Shear Margin Collapse with Compressive Arch Failure and Observations |
| Ciara Willis | PhD* | Simon Thorrold (WHOI) | Movement and Trophic Ecology of Large Pelagic Fishes Connecting Surface Waters with the Ocean’s Twilight Zone |
