Laura Haynes

Laura Haynes is a geochemist who investigates climate and ocean change throughout Earth’s history. She primarily studies small, ubiquitous marine protists called foraminifera. For her dissertation, she grew living foraminifera in the laboratory in order to better understand how their shell geochemistry records ocean acidification and warming events. She now works primarily on fossil foraminifera found in deep-sea sediments in order to reconstruct past ocean biogeochemistry and ecological dynamics. In 2020 she sailed on the International Ocean Discovery Program’s Expedition 378, where the team recovered a new deep-sea sediment record of South Pacific Ocean conditions during a period of profound planetary warmth (57-45 million years ago). She is also investigating the distribution of foraminifera in the Hudson River Estuary and their response to modern environmental conditions with students and colleagues at Vassar and Barnard College.

Haynes received her B.A. from Pomona College in Geology and her Ph.D. from Columbia University in Geochemistry and Paleoceanography. Her courses explore the past, present, and future of our planet’s biogeochemical systems, including ESCI-153 The Fluid Earth, ESCI-277 Biogeochemistry, ESCI-325 Mass Extinctions, and ESCI-321 Advanced Topics in Environmental Geology.