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Amelia Shevenell

Amelia Shevenell is a Paleoceanographer, who generates geochemical, and micropaleontologic records from marine sediments to understand Earth’s high latitude climate evolution. Ultimately, she hopes her group will contribute to a greater understanding of ocean-ice sheet interactions in the context of ongoing climate change. Shevenell was born and raised near Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. She is the great niece of Mary Sears, the first woman oceanographer at WHOI and the first woman to have a US Navy research vessel named after her. Shevenell, inspired by her family’s oceanographic legacy, earned a bachelor’s degree in Geology and Studio Art at Hamilton College. After graduation, the allure of big adventures took Shevenell to Juneau, Alaska, where she worked as an environmental consultant and analytical chemist. Shevenell then attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she studied Antarctic ice sheet evolution and paleoceanography under Prof. James P. Kennett and earned her PhD in Marine Science (2004). Shevenell was awarded a Program on Climate Change/Joint Institute of the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Washington School of Oceanography, where she worked to understand the role of ocean temperatures on past ice sheets. From 2007-2011, Shevenell was a Lecturer in Earth Sciences and Geography at University College London. Shevenell then joined the faculty of the University of South Florida College of Marine Science, earning tenure in 2017. Shevenell and her husband met on a 2001 R/V Nathanial B. Palmer cruise to East Antarctica. They have a daughter and a black Labrador.