The UW College of the Environment is pleased to announce that Eric Steig has agreed to serve as chair of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences (ESS), effective February 1, 2020, through June 30, 2023.

Steig is a glaciologist and isotope geochemist who studies how the climate behaved in the past to learn what it can tell us both about the effects of climate change today, and how it will change in the future. He uses ice core records to study climate variability over thousands of years. He works on the geological history and dynamics of ice sheets, as well as on aspects of atmospheric chemistry, and develops novel laboratory research tools in isotope geochemistry. He is the founding co-director of ISOLAB, a state-of-the art isotope geochemistry facility involving research ranging from climate, atmospheric chemistry and neotectonics, to geobiology, aquatic science and fisheries. In addition to his research and teaching, he is committed to fostering greater public understanding of the effects of climate change, and is a founding member of RealClimate.org.

The College would also like to thank Ken Creager for his service as the outgoing director.

“Ken has been a calm and thoughtful contributor to our deliberations and I am particularly appreciative of his work to harness the imagination and energy of the ESS faculty in strategic planning for the future of the department,” said Lisa Graumlich, dean and Mary Laird Wood Professor at the College of the Environment.

Thanks are also due to the advisory search committee for their outreach to the Earth and Space Sciences community, energy and thoughtfulness, including Tim Essington (Committee Chair, Professor, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences), Curtis Deutsch (Professor, School of Oceanography), Kate Huntington (Professor, Department of Earth and Space Sciences) and Joe Kobayashi (Academic Advisor, Marine Biology Program).