Austin is interested in how the climate of the past is archived by mountain glaciers in the high-altitude tropics.   His dissertation research is on the use of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS) to identify mineral particles in ice cores from Earth's highest tropical mountain.  He hopes to develop a robust mineral dust timeline to track the evolution of dust transport in tropical South America since the Late Glacial Stage (~20,000 years ago) and to build repositories for open-source data/software that other researchers can use to help advance the field of tropical ice core dust research. 

See some of Austin's latest projects on his GitHub.

Advisor: Dr. Lonnie Thompson