I’m very happy to welcome Natalia Varela to the VT Sedimentary Systems Research group. Natalia arrived in January 2018 as a Ph.D. student.

Natalia is from Santiago, Chile, and received a Bachelor’s in Geology at the Universidad de Concepción in 2009 and earned her professional degree in 2015. She has participated in several stratigraphy-related projects in central Chile, Patagonia, and Antarctica, studying the organic portion of Cretaceous formations and their correlation with the depositional environment. Natalia also has experience working as a geologist for energy, mining, and environmental companies.

Natalia will be working on IODP Expedition 374 (Ross Sea West Antarctic Ice Sheet History) samples and data for her dissertation research. Specifically, Natalia will use the occurrence and character of thin-bedded, overbank turbidites recovered from a core drilled on a continental rise canyon-channel system to investigate the Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) production history in the Pliocene-Pleistocene. For another project, Natalia will use downhole logs from a continental shelf site in the Ross Sea to characterize ice-sheet-proximal lithofacies and examine ice sheet advance/retreat history over the past ~17 million years.

We are excited to have her on board. ¡Bienvenida Natalia!