In an age of fierce competition for research dollars, Northwestern geochemistry professor Andrew Jacobson said his work is getting all of the support it needs.
“It’s fantastic,” Jacobson said. “This is the premier institution for research. There’s no doubt about it.”
Since June, Jacobson has secured nearly $1.5 million in outside funding for his research on climate change, studying how different isotopes compose various elements in nature.
Jacobson was first awarded $847,000 in June from the National Science Foundation’s Major Research Instrumentation Program to purchase a device called a multi-collector thermal ionization mass spectrometer. The device will help him analyze the composition of isotopes in elements such as calcium, he said.
“What the MC-TIMS allows me to do is to measure the relative abundance of these different isotopes that comprise various elements,” Jacobson said. “We’re measuring those differences and using them as a tool for tracing processes that occur at the surface of the earth.”
On Oct. 9, Jacobson was awarded a Packard Fellowship by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. It is awarded to promising researchers at the beginning of their careers. The fellowship comes with $625,000 in unrestricted grant money over five years, money Jacobson said will be used to support his work studying calcium isotope geochemistry in Alaska.
According to Jacobson, calcium isotopes in permafrost are different from those in river water, so studying river water can indicate how fast permafrost is melting. Scientists are anxious to know this, as locked within the permafrost is between 35 and 45 percent of the Earth’s carbon. This carbon could be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, furthering global warming and melting more ice and permafrost.
Professor Brad Sageman, the head of NU’s Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, said he nominated Jacobson for the fellowship because he was the most promising NU candidate who had not been nominated.
“The deal with Andy was that this was his turn,” Sageman said. “We had nominated another faculty member a couple of times – he ended up getting a career award from the National Science Foundation, and Andy was next in line.”
Jacobson said earlier research has suggested some level of climate change is already underway in the Arctic. This makes his work more urgent, because he is establishing the current rate of permafrost melt, which could serve as a reference point for scientists in the future.
“The climate is changing at a relatively rapid rate, so the baseline is already a moving target,” Jacobson said. “The sooner we get out there and establish this point, the better off we’ll be.”
Jacobson has collected permafrost samples from Alaska. This summer, he acquired 16 samples from rivers at or above the Arctic Circle. Weinberg junior Eric Kramer, who went with him as part of a Weinberg summer research grant, said the 10-day trip was not nearly as arduous as collecting permafrost samples above the Arctic Circle would seem.
“We camped out at night and in the day went out and collected permafrost samples,” Kramer said. “It was light out during the night, so that was kind of disorienting, but it was fun.”
Sageman said vying for grants is extremely competitive, and Jacobson was fortunate to receive the money in such a tight environment.
“A lot of people will say, ‘You practically will have to had completed the research in order to get funding,'” Sageman said. “It’s very difficult to get speculative things funded these days.”
Sageman said Jacobson’s “pioneering work” thoroughly deserved the funding.
Jacobson said that while nothing would make him give up teaching, he is currently very busy and is in the midst of applying for funding from the NSF’s Office of Polar Programs.
“As a faculty member, your life is never done,” Jacobson said. “I’m already onto getting money to continue this work and see what different directions I can take it in.”
Reach Michael Gsovski at [email protected].
