Aradhna Tripati

Aradhna Tripati is an American geoscientist, climate scientist, and advocate for diversity. She is the director of the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science^[1] and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)^[2] where she is part of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability,^[3] the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences,^[4] the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences,^[5] and the California Nanosystems Institute.^[6] Her research includes advancing new chemical tracers for the study of environmental processes, and studying the history of climate change and Earth systems, and she is recognized for her research on climate change and clumped isotope geochemistry.^[7] She studies the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and the impacts on temperature, the water cycle, glaciers and ice sheets, and oceanic pH.^[8] She has over 60 publications in Nature, Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,^[9] and other journals.

Professor Tripati engages in activism^[10] to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sciences and in the workforce, with a particular focus on addressing the underrepresentation of women, people of color, and other minorities in geoscience, environmental science, and other STEM fields. At the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science,^[1] she is developing a cohort of community-minded scientists with expertise in climate, environmental science, green chemistry, and green engineering who will become leaders in the years to come.

Professor Tripati has been awarded for her contributions to research, teaching, and service, including the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their research careers.^[11]

Early life and education

Born in Texas, she moved to California at age three with her parents, who had emigrated to the United States from the Fiji Islands. Professor Tripati went to elementary school and junior high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.^[12] At age 12 she enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles^[13] as a full-time student through their Early Entrance Program.^[14] Professor Tripati cites reading books about the female scientists Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey as early role models who ultimately influenced the course of her career.

Professor Tripati holds a B.S. in Geology^[14] from California State University, Los Angeles where she received several awards including the Aaron Waters Award^[15] for outstanding senior. She received her Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the University of California,^[16] Santa Cruz in 2002 where she received the 1999 Aaron Waters Award for best dissertation proposal in her department and became a Schlanger Ocean Drilling graduate fellow in 2004. Professor Tripati also received a Gates Millennium Scholarship ^[17] in 2000 that was instrumental in supporting her to complete her graduate studies.^[14]

Professor Tripati began her postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge with a Marshall Sherfield Postdoctoral Fellowship.^[14][18] Over the next eight years as an independent researcher, Tripati received several fellowships: the Comer Abrupt Climate Change Fellowship, the Thomas Neville Research Fellowship in Natural Science at Magdalene College, and a UK National Environmental Research Council (NERC) Fellowship.^[14] She also was a visiting scientist at the California Institute of Technology from 2007-2012.^[14][19]

Academia

In 2009, Professor Tripati became an assistant professor at UCLA, where she continues to teach full-time today.^[14] She has joint appointments in the Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences and Earth,^[20] Planetary, & Space Sciences^[21] departments and the Institutes of Geophysics & Planetary Physics and Environment & Sustainability.^[22] She founded and directs the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science at UCLA.

Professor Tripati has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Western Brittany and at the State Natural History Museum of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen.^[23][14]

Research

Aradhna Tripati and a group of community college students in one of her research laboratories.

Tripati has established a clumped isotope laboratory at the frontiers of multiple fields and is an expert in the dynamics of past climate change over a range of timescales, from the last ice age to deep in Earth’s history.^[8] The primary geochemical method she works with is clumped isotope thermometry, which has led to advancements of its use in the field.^[8] Her research lab at UCLA is one of the few American labs who uses this method as a tool for geological research to study climate change on land and in the oceans in concert with climate model analysis.^[8][14]

Since she was an undergraduate student, Professor Tripati has been working on advancing and utilizing state-of-the-art geochemical methods to understand Earth's climate evolution.^[14] Over the course of her career, she has applied these methods to better understand the history and patterns of changes in Earth’s temperature, carbon cycling, pH, ice volume, and hydrology.^{[24][25][26][27]} She has conducted research in fields as diverse as clumped isotope geochemistry, marine geochemistry, climate science, biogeochemistry, and geobiology.^[8][14] Some of her research involves fieldwork in the western and midwestern US, central China, southern England, Italy, Arctic Svalbard, Antarctica, and the tropical Pacific.^[8]

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Professor Tripati advocates for increased diversity in the workforce and in STEM, and uses a range of approaches to actively counter social biases in STEM fields.^[10]

Awards and honors

• Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE) from President Obama’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (2017 announcement)^[31]
• Bromery Award, Geological Society of America (2017)^[32]
• US National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow (2015)^[33]
• Chair International D'Excellence in Stable Isotopes and Biogeochemistry, LabexMER, European Institute of Marine Sciences (2015–2018)^[34]
• E. O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science - on the role of carbon dioxide in climate change (2014)^[35]
• NSF CAREER Award (2014–2019)^[36]
• Vasa Cube Awardee for UCLA’s Fiat Lux Freshman Seminar program (2013, 2016)
• Hellman Fellowship (2012–2013)^[37]
• UCLA Career Development Award (2012)
• UK National Environmental Research Council (NERC) Fellowship (2006–2010)
• Thomas Nevile Fellowship in Natural Sciences, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge (2006–2010)
• Comer Abrupt Climate Change Fellowship (2003–2005)
• Wolfson College Visiting Fellowship, University of Cambridge (2002–2004)
• Gates Millennium Scholar (2000–2002)
• Gretchen L. Blechschmidt Award from Geological Society of America (2000)
• UC Regents Fellowship (1996–1997)
• University Early Entrance Program (1992–1994)

Talks and lectures

Professor Tripati has given speeches around the world about her research and on how to effectively promote diversity in the sciences and in the workforce.^[14] She has given invited talks at universities and research institutes and keynote lectures at international meetings.^[14]

References