Ben Fitzhugh, associate professor of Anthropology, has been appointed by Dean Graumlich as the new director of the Quaternary Research Center. The Center fosters interdisciplinary environmental research focused on the Quaternary geologic period—the last 2½ million years of Earth’s history—a time encompassing massive and abrupt changes of climate, sea level, global biology, and ice cover, as well the evolution of humans and the advent of civilization. The Center and associated faculty have also been instrumental in launching the UW’s new Future of Ice Initiative, which is driving intensive and focused research on the changing nature of our planet’s polar regions. Fitzhugh takes over the helm from previous director Eric Steig, professor of Earth and Space Science.