Our group
David McGee
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor
David came to MIT in 2012 after graduate studies at Tulane and Columbia Universities and a postdoc at the University of Minnesota. Prior to grad school, he taught secondary school science for 6 years. Outside of the lab group, he directs the Terrascope first-year learning community and serves as the Associate Department Head for diversity, equity and inclusion.
Adam Jost
Program Scientist
Adam manages the McGee Lab facilities. He is interested in exploring questions about the co-evolution of life and the environment over geologic time using isotope geochemistry, and about the diagenesis of carbonate rocks. Here is his personal website.
Benjamin Tiger
Graduate Student
Ben is interested in understanding how the ocean influences tropical hydroclimate during abrupt climate changes, like those spurred by explosive volcanic eruptions, glacial outburst floods, and greenhouse gases. This involves using geochemical paleoclimate archives from stalagmites in Madagascar in combination with state-of the art climate models.
Madison Wittmer
Graduate Student
Madison is using speleothems from northwestern Canada to reconstruct high-latitude temperatures over the last 1.5 million years.
Jaren Yambing
Graduate Student
Jaren is a graduate student currently working on a project to reconstruct past changes in the Southeast Asian Monsoon using speleothems from Vietnam and the Philippines. He came to MIT in 2024 after studying at the University of Cambridge, UK (MPhil) and Carleton College, MN (BA
Former group members
Graduate students (with current position)
Michaela Fendrock (Assistant Professor, Alfred University)
Christine Chen (Postdoctoral Researcher, Lawrence Livermore National Lab)
Christopher Kinsley (Postdoctoral Researcher, Berkeley Geochronology Center)
Gabriela Serrato Marks (Partner at Stellate Communications)
Elena Steponaitis (Research Scientist, NASA)
Postdocs (with current position)
Cameron Batchelor (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)
Chris Hayes (assistant professor, U. Southern Mississippi)
Ben Hardt (secondary school science teacher)
Yu-Te (Alan) Hsieh (research scientist, Oxford U.)
Charlotte Skonieczny (assistant professor, U. Paris Sud)
Francois Tissot (assistant professor, Caltech)
Undergraduate students
Aviva Intveld, MCSC Climate Scholar and senior thesis (Spring 2022-Spring 2023)
Angela Douglass, Wellesley UROP (Fall 2021-Fall 2022)
Markey Freudenberg-Puricelli, MIT UROP (Spring 2022-Fall 2022)
Pratistha Timilsina, MIT UROP (Spring/Summer 2021)
Anna Meurer, MIT UROP (Summer 2020)
Viban Gonzales, MIT UROP (Spring 2020)
Ruth Tweedy, Senior Thesis (Fall 2019-Spring 2020)
Naomi Lutz, MIT UROP (Winter 2019)
Olivia Parsons, MIT UROP (Winter 2019)
Edith Chavez, MIT UROP (Winter 2019)
Sarah Weidman, MIT UROP (Summer/Fall 2018)
Gabriela Cazares, MIT UROP (Spring 2018-Spring 2019)
Andrew Iverson, MIT UROP (Winter 2018-Spring 2019)
Jade Fischer, MIT UROP (Winter/Spring 2018-Fall 2021)
Zixuan Rao, University of Science and Technology of China (Summer 2017)
Yan Zhang, Tongji University senior thesis (Winter-Spring 2017)
Kaylee Brent, MIT UROP and senior thesis (Summer 2016-2017)
Abnell Comas, MIT UROP (Winter 2016)
Zachary Norberg, St. Olaf College (Summer 2015)
Ashling Neary, MIT UROP and senior thesis (Summer 2014-2016)
Jeff Rosen, Carleton College, Undergraduate Thesis (Summer 2014-Fall 2015)
Jessica Fujimori, MIT undergraduate thesis (Fall 2013-Spring 2014)
Michaela Fendrock, Wellesley College, Summer internship (Summer 2013)
Lucy Page, Williams College, Summer internship (Summer 2013)
Matthieu Pythoud, U. Minnesota, Summer internship (Summer 2013)
Siyi Zhang, Wellesley College, UROP/Summer internship (Summer-Fall 2012)