I work on questions concerning the marine silica cycle in deep time. Among other things, I want to know how ocean silica concentrations have varied throughout the Phanerozoic, particularly in response to the evolution and ecological rise of sponges, radiolarians, and diatoms. So far I’ve used radiolarian morphology and diagenetic modeling to explore this problem. In the future I hope to work with other tools as well, including Si isotopes, Ge/Si, chert petrography, ecological modeling, and siliceous microfossil and chert databases.
I’m also interested in other biosphere-geosphere interactions, such as how bioturbation affects seawater chemistry.