Natalie Hermosillo

IGC FELLOW    |   Global Change Center

Ph.D. Student  •  Geosciences

Advisor: Dr. Benjamin Gill

Research Interests: Biogeochemistry, paleoceanography, environmental health, climate change

nataleigh@vt.edu • LinkedIn • Google Scholar

Natalie is a PhD student in the Department of Geosciences studying sedimentary geochemistry under Dr. Benjamin Gill. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a bachelors in Earth Sciences and a concentration in ocean science. During her time at UCSC she became interested in environmental change and worked in a lab studying wetland biogeochemistry. This led to her senior thesis project studying sulfur cycling and how it varies throughout different wetland environments. Through this work she had the opportunity to work with a variety of collaborators from different fields of science which contributed to her interest in interdisciplinary work.

Her research at Virginia Tech is focused on reconstructing the carbon and sulfur cycles across late Cambrian and early Ordovician extinctions. These proxies allow us to infer global change by investigating the impacts of marine deoxygenation on ancient marine ecosystems. These insights are relevant to current climate-driven shifts in ocean chemistry, such as deoxygenation and acidification, which pose significant risks to today’s marine ecosystems.

Natalie is excited to be a part of the GCC community and have the opportunity to collaborate across departments with faculty in other fields. She hopes to integrate her findings into new frameworks that can inform our understanding of contemporary and future ocean chemistry changes under global warming.