Wellner to Share Her Scientific Experience in West Antarctica
The U.S. Science Support Program has named University of Houston associate professor of geology Julia Wellner as a distinguished lecturer for its Ocean Discovery Lecture Series. The series brings earth science scholars and their knowledge to a variety of institutions including universities, museums and aquaria.
Wellner will share scientific discoveries from her 2019 expedition to the Amundsen Sea in west Antarctica, in which she was co-chief for the International Ocean Discovery Program, an international marine research collaboration that explores Earth’s history and dynamics.
“I am honored to be chosen as a lecturer for the Ocean Discovery Lecture Series,” said Wellner. “Mainly, I am excited about the opportunity to represent the science party from my research cruise and share the work of so many people with new audiences. Our work is focused on ice sheet, climate and ocean changes in the past. A wide audience of people is interested in learning about those changes as a way to put modern glacial events into context.”
Her lecture, "Waxing and Waning of an Ice Sheet: Records from the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica,” will focus on explaining the purpose behind the drill cores the expedition team obtained. The team used cores from the earth to reconstruct glacial cycles over the past few million years. These cycles are recorded in the ocean sediments.
Although Wellner has been chosen as a distinguished lecturer for a different organization in the past, this lecture series poses as a new and different opportunity, not only because it is mainly online due to the pandemic, but because it is suited more toward a higher education audience.
“I am really happy to have the chance to talk to students from a range of different schools,” she adds. “While I am telling them a bit about the international research team I am representing, I also share a bit about the work and research we are doing at UH.”
Wellner will deliver eight lectures in total, with five sponsored by the International Ocean Discovery Program.
- Rebeca Trejo, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics