Natalie is a postdoc at the American Museum of Natural History where she studies how the oceans have responded to past climate change events in order to understand what role the oceans may play in amplifying or muting climate changes today and in the future. Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, she attended the University of North Carolina at Wilmington where she majored in Geology and Oceanography before heading off to grad school to study Geology at the University of South Carolina.
In her research, she measures the chemistry of tiny, sand-grain sized fossil zooplankton shells called foraminifera (or forams for short) which record the chemistry of the seawater within the walls of their shell as they grow, much like tiny time capsules.