Max Berkelhammer

Email Address: berkelha@uic.edu
College: Liberal Arts and Sciences Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
Title: Assistant Professor
Phone: x38271
Webpage: http://earth.usc.edu/~berkelha/
Participating in the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Awards program: Yes

Research Interest:
My research involves studies of climate change with a focus on water and carbon cycle processes. The research involves a combination of field measurements, lab analysis and numerical modeling. The projects tend to utilize tracers to study the pathway of water and carbon through different ecosystems. Current projects involve research on the interactions between the Greenland ice sheet and atmosphere, forest-atmosphere interactions in the Rocky Mountains, carbon and water use in grassland and agricultural ecosystems.

Minimum time commitment in hours per week: 8

Qualifications of a Student:
Experience with Excel, Matlab or other software for processing data.
Experience working in a lab either through Chemistry class or from working with another researcher.
Commitment to provide a consistent number of hours per week (such as 8).
A GPA greater than 2.8 in Science/Engineering/Mat classes.
Majoring in Science or Engineering.

Brief Summary of what is expected from the student:
As an example: the student is expected to prepare water samples from a Greenland ice core for isotopic analysis. This involves pipetting of water, careful documentation of the sample and loading it into a laser absorption spectrometer for isotopic analysis. Following completion of the analysis the student will quality check the data and begin analysis on the climatic significance o the analysis such as by comparison their record to meteorological data.

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