Outstanding student paper award

Abstract

The Ocean Sciences Section presented the outstanding student paper award to Ann Pearson at the 1998 AGU Spring Meeting in Boston, Mass., last May.Ann presented a paper titled “Molecular‐level Radiocarbon Analysis as a Tracer of Organic Matter Source: Results for Lipid Biomarkers from Santa Monica Basin Surface Sediment.” Ann completed a B.A. in chemistry from Oberlin College in 1992. She served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Ecuador in 1993–1994, and began graduate study in the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in 1994. She is currently working towards a Ph.D. with Timothy Eglinton and Ann McNichol, both of WHOI. Her interests are broadly based in light isotope biogeochemistry, and she increasingly finds herself drawn to projects investigating microbial pathways of carbon utilization and their impact on the carbon cycle. For her thesis work, Ann is conducting the first systematic investigation of the uses of molecular‐level radiocarbon analysis as both chronometer and biogeochemical tracer.