Jennifer C. Bowen

I will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech in Fall 2025. 

I received my PhD in Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI and my BS in Chemistry and Environmental Science & Policy at Chapman University in Orange, CA.  Starting as a chemist, I have always been interested in the types of natural organic molecules that undergo degradation in the environment and the mechanisms involved in greenhouse gas production.  During my PhD, I studied the degradation of organic molecules in freshwaters and became interested in how this molecular-level knowledge could be related back to fluxes of carbon in the environment.  I also started using natural abundance radiocarbon measurements as a NOSAMS graduate student fellow to identify the ways environmental change may disrupt the pools of carbon undergoing degradation. As a postdoc at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Stanford University, I have explored these ideas further to understand the fate of natural organic molecules in tropical wetlands and the coastal ocean.  In all aspects of my research, I am motivated to improve the transferability of lab-based results to carbon fluxes in the environment, so that the chemical insight gained can help reduce the uncertainty in greenhouse gas emissions from ecosystems undergoing change along the terrestrial-aquatic continuum. ​​​​​​​​​