Lauren Geiser
- Email: eelg@leeds.ac.uk
- Thesis title: Exploring the growth of deep-sea bivalves in areas of potential seafloor mining
- Supervisors: Crispin Little, Dr Clare Woulds, Adrian Glover, Natural History Museum London
Profile
I am an interdisciplinary scientist with background in biology, chemistry, mathematics, and sustainability. I completed my undergraduate degree in the United States, my masters degree in Scotland, and am now working towards my PhD in England.
My project explores the growth rate, age, and longevity of deep-sea bivalve communities in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a 4000-6000m deep abyssal plane in the Pacific Ocean. The CCZ contains the highest concentrations of polymetallic nodules which are being targeted by deep-sea mining for nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, and rare earth elements. I am using sclerochronological techniques to analyse the internal growth patterns of bivalve shells that live amongst these nodules.
I am also a founding member of the LUU Womxn in STEM society.
Research interests
- Deep-sea mining & its environmental impacts
- Marine biology & oceanography
- Conchology & malacology
- Sclerochronology
- Environmental ecology
Qualifications
- MSc Sustainability: Environmental Modelling - University of Dundee, 2021
- BS Biology - University of Dayton, 2019
- BS Mathematics - University of Dayton, 2019
- Minor Chemistry - University of Dayton, 2019
Research groups and institutes
- Earth Surface Science Institute
- Palaeo@Leeds
- water@leeds