SACCOM Committee Members

Lewis's research and teaching focuses on understanding the nature and dynamics of Quaternary paleoenvironmental change and landscape evolution, environmental geology and natural hazards along active plate margins. Lewis has concentrated his efforts on two major geologic-geographic regions: 1) the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen; and 2) the western Cordilleras of North and South America. This is because these regions provide some of the best natural laboratories for understanding the dynamics of geomorphic, tectonic and climatic processes, and ultimately they provide analogs for understanding the evolution of many ancient plate boundaries. Lewis has also undertaken research in other regions, including the American Midwest, Egypt, Venezuela, Morocco, Trinidad, Thailand, Yemen, Azerbaijan and the United Kingdom.

Sourav’s research and teaching focus on reconstructing Quaternary paleoenvironmental change, landscape evolution, and contemporary surface processes using field and remote sensing mapping, geochronology techniques, sedimentological and stratigraphical analyses, lake sediment coring, and numerical modeling. Sourav currently is a postdoc at the University of California, Los Angeles where he is extensively using luminescence dating techniques to answer outstanding research questions in sediment dynamics, paleoseismology, paleoclimatology, thermoluminescence, and archeology in the American southwest, Alaska, and New Zealand. His doctoral research at the University of Cincinnati focused on reconstructing Quaternary glaciations and quantifying headwall erosion rates in the Himalaya and Tibet using terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) dating. He also worked with micro and macro sedimentology of subglacial landforms in the Indian Himalaya during his Masters at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He currently also teaches online geology courses at Northern Kentucky University. Sourav enjoys fieldwork in the remote wilderness and is ready to share/collaborate if you have an exciting project in mind.

I have completed my Masters in History from Mumbai University, Maharashtra in 2005. I completed my Post Graduate Diploma course in Archaeology and Ancient Indian History and Culture from Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Pune, Maharashtra in 2012. From 2013- 2019, I pursued my Ph.D. research in Palaeolithic Archaeology and have recently submitted my thesis. I have been on 3 excavations at different sites during this period and have done 4 seasons of exploration in my own study region. My expertise covers Palaeolithic lithic typo-technological knowledge along with understanding the landscape scales hominin behavioural patterns as observed during my fieldwork.

Yang’s research focuses on palaeoclimate reconstruction utilizing aeolian deposits. He has been working intensively in the loess areas of northern China and southern Tajikistan, where sedimentological and geochemical records were obtained as his primary tools to reconstruct palaeoenvironment. Most of his work to date has involved studies of the shift in the Asian monsoonal rainbelt during past warm intervals (e.g., the Quaternary interglacials and Pliocene warm periods). 

Jerry McManus is a Senior Staff member of the Geochemistry Division of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of Columbia University. His research primarily utilizes deep-sea sediments and is focused on reconstructing natural variability in the Earth’s climate and the large-scale ocean circulation, with a special focus on the role that the ocean plays in abrupt climate change.