Faculty Promotions
Congratulations to EAPS Professors Colette Heald, Shuhei Ono, and Noelle Selin on their recent promotions.
Colette Heald
Colette Heald is the Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her primary appointment is in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with a joint appointment in EAPS. Professor Colette Heald has been promoted to associate professor with tenure.
Heald’s work in biosphere-atmosphere interactions, aerosol sources and transformations, and the connections between atmospheric chemistry and climate has led to groundbreaking studies that involve integration of atmospheric observations from scales including ground stations, aircraft campaigns and satellite sensors with global models of chemistry and climate. In a recent study, Heald demonstrated how ozone can collude with climate change to curb crop yields and threaten global food security.
Heald received her undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics from Queen’s University in Canada in 2000. She obtained her Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University in 2005, under the direction of Prof. Daniel J. Jacob. She was a recipient of both the Canadian NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship and the NASA Earth System Science Graduate Fellowship. Her thesis focused on transpacific transport of pollution and the use of inverse modeling to estimate emissions from aircraft and satellite observations. She was a recipient of the NOAA Global and Climate Change Postdoctoral Fellowship, which supported her research at the University of California Berkeley from 2006 through 2007, with Prof. Allen Goldstein and Prof. Inez Fung. She became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University in 2008 and moved to MIT in January of 2012.
Shuhei Ono
Assistant Professor of Biogeochemistry, Shuhei Ono, has been promoted to associate professor with tenure.
Ono’s research concerns the application of multiple-sulfur isotope systems to study reaction pathways in sulfur biogeochemical cycles. He applies this technique in the studies of the deep biosphere, seafloor hydrothermal systems, and the change in oxygen in Earth’s early environment. A particular focus of this research has been to understand the origin of mass-independent sulfur isotope fractionation as a unique record of early Earth’s atmospheric chemistry and microbial evolution.
Work in the Ono Group combines fieldwork and analysis of natural samples with laboratory experiments. Recent research includes laboratory calibrations of sulfur isotope effects during photochemistry and, with Prof. Tanja Bosak, microbial sulfate reduction. His lab has also developed instrumentation to rapidly and precisely analyze samples of environmental methane aimed at pinpointing how and where the gas was formed. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, second only to carbon dioxide in its capacity to trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere for a long time, can originate from lakes and swamps, natural gas pipelines, deep-sea vents, and livestock. Understanding the sources of methane, and how the gas is formed, could give scientists a better understanding of its role in warming the planet.
Ono holds a B.Sc. in Geology from Waseda University, Tokyo, and a Ph.D. in Geochemistry from Pennsylvania State University (2001). He joined the MIT faculty in 2007.
Noelle Selin
Noelle Selin is the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Assistant Professor of Engineering Systems and Atmospheric Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a primary academic appointment in the Engineering Systems Division, she holds a joint appointment in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). Professor Selin has been promoted to Associate Professor (without tenure).
Selin's research uses atmospheric chemistry modeling to inform decision-‐making strategies on air pollution, climate change and toxic substances including mercury and persistent organic pollutants. She has also published articles and book chapters on the interactions between science and policy in international environmental negotiations, in particular focusing on global efforts to regulate hazardous chemicals and persistent organic pollutants.
Prior to joining the MIT faculty in 2010, Selin spent two years as a postdoctoral associate and research scientist with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. She received her Ph.D. in 2007 from Harvard University in Earth and Planetary Sciences, in Prof. Daniel Jacob’s Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group. As her Ph.D. research, she developed and evaluated a global, 3D atmospheric model of mercury pollution. Prior to starting her Ph.D. program, she was a research associate with the Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She was also a visiting Fulbright fellow at the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, Denmark, and worked on chemicals issues at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She has a B.A. in Environmental Science and Public Policy and an M.A. in Earth and Planetary Sciences, both from Harvard.
All promotions are effective July 1, 2015.