people
projects
fieldwork
publications
alumni
news

home
 

Torbjörn's former advisees are currently employed in a wide range of fields in academia, government, and industry. Here are a few short profiles of some of them:

Joep Storms and Remke van Dam carried out their MS work in the Mississippi Delta, studying Holocene fluviodeltaic evolution and finishing their degrees at Utrecht University in 1996. Both went on to receive their doctorate. Joep is now a Associate Professor at Delft University of Technology where, among others, he develops models of fluviodeltaic sedimentation. Remke has become a specialist in shallow geophysics (notably ground-penetrating radar) and is  currently an Assistant Professor of geological sciences at Michigan State University.

Nico Willemse completed his PhD at Utrecht (2000) studying lacustrine and eolian sedimentary archives in West Greenland. Among others, he drew the attention to the mismatch between Holocene oxygen-isotope records in the Greenland Summit ice cores. After postdoctoral work that included a continuous, six-month field season in Greenland, he became a geoarchaeologist with RAAP Archaeological Consultancy in The Netherlands. He is based in their office in Zutphen that covers the eastern part of the country.

Jakob Wallinga also earned his degrees at Utrecht University. He worked in the Mississippi Delta for his MS degree (1997), followed by a PhD study on improving luminescence dating methods for fluvial sands from the Rhine-Meuse Delta. Among others, he demonstrated systematically different OSL ages between sand-sized quartz and feldspar grains. He finished his thesis in 2001, and subsequently spent about a decade at Delft University of Technology where he became the Director of the Netherlands Centre for Luminescence dating. He recently (2012) became a Professor of Soil Geography and Landscape at Wageningen University, where he continues to lead the NCL.

Scott Bick carried out sea-level research in the Mississippi Delta. His work in the Bayou Sale area led to the discovery of the first sea-level record for the 8.2 ka event. His MS thesis (2005) at the University of Illinois at Chicago showed that portions of the Pleistocene basement underneath the Mississippi Delta are much more stable than previously believed. Scott is now employed in the environmental engineering industry, based in the Lockport, Illinois, office of Trihydro.

Juan González received his doctorate from Tulane in 2008. His thesis work established a correlation between rates of sea-level rise and climate episodes such as the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age. His research also increased our understanding about subsidence processes along the US Gulf Coast, by identifying glacio-isotatic adjustment (forebulge collapse) as a significant contributor. Juan is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas - Pan American.

Yongxiang 'Frank' Li was a postdoc at Tulane from 2007 to 2009. His research provided conclusive evidence that the sea-level jump in the Mississippi Delta around 8200 years ago was directly linked to the final stage of Lake Agassiz drainage. In addition, he inferred the freshwater volume associated with this superflood and used climate modeling to address the impact of the location and volume of freshwater forcing on abrupt North Atlantic cooling. Frank is currently an Assistant Professor in earth sciences at Nanjing University.

Marc Hijma spent two years as a postdoc at Tulane (2010-2012) where he worked on a variety of projects, including the compilation of a comprehensive sea-level database for the US Gulf Coast, as well as a field program aimed at refining the geochronology of the Mississippi Delta and the adjacent Chenier Plain. Marc subsequently returned to The Netherlands where he is currently a Researcher/Consultant at Deltares.