Professors honored for career contributions to geosciences, climate research

Jordan wins Leopold von Buch Plaque

J. Preston Levis Professor of Engineering EmeritaTeresa Jordan has been selected to receive the Leopold von Buch Plaque by the German Geological Association. The award is named for the founder and first chairman of the German Geological Association. It is given to one person each year to honor "outstanding overall achievements in the geosciences." The award was presented at the annual meeting of the German Geological Society (DGGV) "GeoSaxonia 2024” held in September in Dresden, Germany.

Jordan grew up on a farm in Chautauqua County in far western New York State—about a quarter of a mile from Lake Erie. Her family grew grapes and her father also worked as a County Extension Agent for Cornell Cooperative Extension. “Out of the 60 people that graduated from my high school when I did, six went off to fight in Vietnam and six of us went to college,” says Jordan, as she looks out the window. “The rest stayed around Chautauqua County. But I wanted new experiences.”

Jordan went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for her undergraduate degree and then to Stanford University for her Ph.D. Jordan specialized in sedimentary geology, looking at rocks that form due to processes taking place on the Earth’s surface. To understand where on the Earth’s surface sedimentary rocks are likely to form, Jordan delved deeply into sub-surface phenomena. In places where one tectonic plate rides up over another, some land is lifted up and some sinks, forming depressions. These depressions are natural traps for water, sand and mud--the trapped particles eventually becoming sedimentary rocks.

After earning her Ph.D. at Stanford, Jordan took a research position at Cornell in 1979. In 1984, she joined the faculty of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. From 2003-2008 she was the Chair of Cornell University's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. During 2001-2003, she was Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs in the Engineering College at Cornell. In 2005, Professor Jordan received the Lawrence Sloss award of the Sedimentary Geology division of the Geological Society of America, and in 2008 she was named the J. Preston Levis Professor of Engineering. In 2014 she was name a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and a Corresponding Member of the Asociación Geológica Argentina. She retired in 2023.

Much of Jordan’s early work focused on sedimentary basins in the Andes as sources of mountain-building history and on surface processes in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Her later work includes a strong focus on finding energy solutions at the intersection of geosciences and engineering.

GSA honors Larry Brown with the 2024 Geophysics and Geodynamics Division George P. Woollard Award

The George P. Woollard Award is the Geophysics and Geodynamics Division's highest honor and recognizes EAS Professor Larry Brown's "fundamental discoveries regarding continental tectonic processes and mountain building." Brown, who is the Sidney Kaufman Professor in Geophysics Emeritus, gave a lecture at the September 2024 GSA Connects in Anaheim, California, where his main nominator, EAS Professor Matt Pritchard, introduced him.

As a kid, Larry Brown was not thinking about tectonic processes and mountain building. “I was bored by fossils and geology,” says Brown. “I loved sci-fi and I wanted to be a physicist and fight off the aliens. I thought I wanted to specialize in stellar nuclear physics.”

But then while he was an undergrad physics major at Georgia Tech, Brown traveled to Charleston, S.C. where his wife was researching historical pirate activity in the area. He came across accounts of earthquakes in Charleston and these piqued his interest. Before he knew it, Brown was working with Professor Tim Long, taking gravity measurements in the Southeast. “I got to go along on a trip up into the Appalachians,” says Brown. “One day we were in this beautiful spot looking out and I said, ‘wait—you guys get paid to do this?’”

Professor Long suggested Brown might want to go to Cornell for his Ph.D. studies so he could work with Jack Oliver. Oliver did foundational work that helped develop the theory of plate tectonics and at the time he was just starting the COCORP project. “So I came to Cornell and I never looked back,” says Brown. “Luck played a big part in it and I was always grateful to Tim Long for making the suggestion.”

At Cornell, Brown was quickly exposed to the biggest names in the field of geological sciences. His work with COCORP in the U.S. led him to similar work around the world, including in the Swiss Alps, Siberia, Tibet, India, Nepal, Hawai’i, and Mongolia. “I have had the good fortune to have worked in some beautiful and interesting places my entire career,” says Brown.

The work Brown did in those beautiful places has now earned him the George P. Woollard Award. Brown is also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America.

AMS awards Mahowald Syukuro Manabe Climate Research Award

EAS Chair and Irving Porter Church Professor in Engineering Natalie Mahowald has been selected by the American Meteorological Society as the 2025 recipient of the Syukuro Manabe Climate Research Award. The AMS commended Mahowald "for revealing biogeochemical feedbacks on climate using Earth System Models to interpret observations and predict global and regional impacts."

When Natalie Mahowald was in middle school in Omaha, Nebraska she took one of those aptitude tests teachers and guidance counsellors sometimes give. The results came back with the oddly specific recommendation that Mahowald might be happy pursuing a career in Geophysics.

Mahowald is now a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS) at Cornell and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. Her research focuses on the atmospheric transport of biogeochemically important species (such as desert dust) at the regional and global scale. She uses models, satellite observations, and field data to better understand how humans are perturbing the natural environment, most specifically through biogeochemical feedback.

In plain language, Mahowald studies the cascading effects of the things human activities are adding to the atmosphere. “It is surprising just how much humans have perturbed the system,” says Mahowald.

Mahowald, who is the current chair of EAS, also very much enjoys teaching. “Students really make you think,” says Mahowald. “Being a professor is a great job—I get to teach; I get to do research; and I maybe get to make the world a better place.” It is now almost forty years since she took that test in middle school and it seems safe to say that in Mahowald’s case, the aptitude test nailed it. The AMS would certainly agree.