Clara Blättler

Clara joined the University of Chicago in 2018 as an assistant professor. She works on geochemical problems related to the carbon cycle, Earth history, chemical oceanography, and geobiology. Although most of her research takes place in inorganic geochemistry laboratories, she has carried out field work both on land and at sea. Before joining UChicago, Clara was a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton and received her PhD from Oxford University and her undergraduate degree from Harvard. The nature of Clara’s research has led to work at sites around the world, including examining the geochemistry of evaporites from Baffin Island, Western Australia, and Oman; carbonate diagenesis and pore fluid composition in the Maldives; Paleoproterozoic sedimentary records from Russia; and authigenic carbonates from methane seeps on the Norwegian shelf. Collaborators at universities around the world, local geological surveys, and international programs have been essential to obtaining these unique samples.

Q: Why is international collaboration important in your field?

A: The context for geological samples is best known by those that do extensive fieldwork in the region, so when we perform laboratory analyses on these samples at UChicago, it is essential to collaborate with local researchers and field specialists to interpret our results properly.

Q: How has your work with international partners been beneficial to you personally?

A: International collaborators have helped gain access to unique samples in industry archives, state repositories, and historic collections that I otherwise would never have had the opportunity to study.