I’m Asmita Banerjee!

I am Asmita Banerjee, a graduate student at Rice University. I am an isotope geochemist studying gas bubbles in polar ice core cores. I look at rare isotopes of oxygen in trapped gas bubbles to understand how climate conditions in the Earth’s past have changed through time because of changes in climate forcings (processes that affect the climate of a planet) such as greenhouse gas concentrations.

With my research, I hope to contribute to our collective understanding of the climate system and improve our predictions of future climate scenarios because of anthropogenic climate change. 

…every time I saw a news article or picture in the National Geographic about researchers in Antarctica or Greenland studying glaciers, I thought that was the coolest job and I aspired to do that myself someday.

I grew up in Kolkata, India and moved to Houston, Texas for my graduate school. I had never seen or been close to much ice but every time I saw a news article or picture in the National Geographic about researchers in Antarctica or Greenland studying glaciers, I thought that was the coolest job and I aspired to do that myself someday. Working on ice core research has taken me a step closer to my aspirations and hopefully eventually, I’ll be able to go on a scientific expedition to Antarctica to drill for ice cores.

When I am not in the lab measuring isotopes in ice cores, I love to read, hike, learn to cook food from different cultures and occasionally ride my bike!

Asmita is on the organizing committee for ICECReW - Ice Core Early Career Researchers Workshop. Learn about the objectives of this new workshop, sponsored by the US Ice Drilling Program.