Originally from Bengaluru, India, Kaustubh joined the Department of Geosciences as an assistant professor in Fall 2019 after a postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University. Prior to that, Kaustubh was at the University of Texas at Austin where he completed his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees; he also has a B.Tech degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka.

Research Interests: paleoceanographic dynamics, foraminiferal geochemistry, monsoons, ENSO, marine paleoecology

Personal Interests: birding, heavy music, photography

Email: kaustubh@arizona.edu

Ryan Glaubke received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University before joining the Paleo2 Lab in the Fall of 2024. He is broadly interested in the reconstructing past ocean conditions from periods of Earth’s history that could serve as “natural analogues” to the rate and magnitude of modern climate change. At Rutgers, Ryan’s dissertation work focused on the role ocean circulation played in the rise of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations across the last major example of global warming—the Last Deglaciation. At Old Dominion University, where Ryan received his B.S. and M.S. degrees, he investigated the response of the El Niño system—the world’s largest and most globally significant recurring climate pattern—to episodes of meltwater discharge across abrupt climate events in the deglacial period. Now, at the University of Arizona, Ryan is investigating whether the Indian Ocean supported a new and potentially significant mode of climate variability during the Pliocene—a warm period approximately 3 million years ago that resembles Earth’s future climate. Together, Ryan hopes these lessons from the past will help inform our projections of future change.

Personal interests: Hiking, surfing, soccer, music, and reading.

Email: glaubke@arizona.edu

Online presence: Bluesky, ResearchGate, Google Scholar

Aniket Dhar is a second year PhD student broadly interested in using geochemistry and mineralogy in carbonate archives like cave calcite formations (speleothems/ stalagmites) to reconstruct past and observed climatic trends. His current research work is focused on reconstructing the last 500 years of southern Indian hydroclimate changes by analyzing the stable isotopic (δ18O and δ13C) composition in a speleothem from southern India. Additionally, Aniket is interested in understanding the kinetics of calcite precipitation and dissolution in karst systems and the chemical exchange during the growth of speleothems using the mineralogy and the trace element (Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca, Ba/Ca) composition of stalagmites.

Alexandra is a first-year M.S. student in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona and joined Dr. Thirumalai’s lab in the Fall of 2023. She is originally from upstate New York and received her BS degree in Atmospheric Science from SUNY Albany. Currently, Alexandra works with stable isotope measurements on foraminifera to reconstruct past climate regimes and variability.

Research Interests: Paleoclimate/Paleoceanography, Stable Isotope Geochemistry, ENSO and other large-scale climate dynamics

Email: aokeefe@arizona.edu

Originally from Northern Virginia, Amanda is a first-year M.S. student who joined Dr. Thirumalai’s Paleo² Lab in the Fall of 2024. Previously, she earned her BA in Earth and Climate Sciences from Middlebury College. Amanda is broadly interested in what foraminiferal proxies like Mg/Ca ratios and stable isotopes (δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C) can reveal about past ocean and climate conditions.

Email: amanoogian@arizona.edu

Hayley McKenley graduated with her undergraduate degree in the Geosciences in 2024 from the University of Arizona. She joined the lab in the summer of 2022 to study benthic foraminifera and continues to work in the Paleo² Lab as a laboratory manager.

Email: hmckenley2011@arizona.edu

Ainsley Carling is a senior undergraduate student in the Geosciences program at the University of Arizona. She joined the  Paleo² Lab in the Fall of 2024. She is currently researching stable isotopes and atmospheric dynamics of Tucson precipitation.

Ammoose is a third-year Ph.D. Scholar from the Central University of Kerala, India. She joined Dr. Thirumalai's Lab in Fall 2022 as a Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellow. Her doctoral research mainly focuses on the paleoceanographic investigations of sediments from the Bay of Bengal using planktic foraminifera as a proxy. At the University of Arizona, she will be working on the fate of the East India Coastal Current (EICC) during the Holocene Epoch and H1 event, correlating with excessively strong and weak phases of ISM variability.

Email: ammooseakj1@gmail.com

Samantha recently graduated from with a BS in Geoscience from the University of Arizona and joined the lab in January 2023.

Natalia is a Ph.D. student at the University of Vigo, advised by Drs. Gianluca Marino & Kaustubh Thirumalai. Natalia is interested in modeling the impacts of bioturbation on foraminiferal datasets, individual foraminiferal analyses, and ocean-atmosphere dynamics of the tropical Indian Ocean.

Email: nbienzobasmontavez@gmail.com

Email: lvetter@arizona.edu