People

Prof Russell Drysdale

Russell focuses on the nature, timing and causes of ice-age terminations and millennial-scale climate change during the Quaternary Period, in conjunction with geochronologists, palaeoceanographers, ice-core scientists and palaeoclimate modellers. His main research area is ice-age cycles, which combines cave, ocean and insolation data to interrogate the drivers of ice-age terminations. His Australian research focuses mainly on past hydrological changes in southern Australia and the monsoon tropics, particularly what drives such changes and how they are influenced by global climate perturbations.

Dr John Hellstrom

John is a uranium-series dating specialist with expertise in uranium–thorium and uranium–lead dating of carbonates. He applies these techniques to address a broad range of research questions related to past climate change, archaeology, and other fields. His has a particular interest in developing highly accurate methods for dating challenging samples, such as those with high initial thorium content, and on constructing robust speleothem depth–age models.

Prof Jon Woodhead

Jon is an isotope geochemist with a keen interest in technique development and innovation in MC-ICPMS and laser ablation technologies, and geochronology. Although recently retired, as Professor Emeritus he maintains a number of ongoing research programs particularly investigating the origin and evolution of the Nullarbor caves.

Dr Kale Sniderman

Kale is a biogeographer, palynologist, and palaeoclimatologist. He is interested in extraction of fossil pollen from speleothems, as a way of understanding how vegetation evolved through time, particularly in dry regions where conventional wetland sediment archives are unavailable.

Isabelle Couchoud