Ashley Braunthal is a native of Connecticut (USA). She holds BA degrees (2014) in Geology and German from Bates College, Maine (USA) and a MSc (2020) in Marine and Atmospheric Science from Stony Brook University, New York (USA). She completed her master's thesis on paleo-redox conditions recorded in laminated sediments of Bowers Ridge, Bering Sea (IODP Expedition 323, Site U1342) in the Wehrmann Biogeochemistry group. Braunthal was a NSF-REU Biogeochemistry Fellow (2013) at UC Irvine in the Czimczik and Randerson groups, as part of the Biosphere-atmosphere trace gas exchange and aerosol emissions from Alaska project, and NASA’s Carbon Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment campaign. In 2015-16, Braunthal was a U.S. - Norway Fulbright Student Scholar as part of the ERC-Synergy granted Ice2Ice project with the Jansen group at the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research. Braunthal worked as a research staff assistant at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (2016-18) in the Raymo and Hemming groups, and the Core Repository.
As a PhD student in the Rosell-Melé Group at the ICTA-UAB, Braunthal will contribute to the 2018 ERC Advanced Grant PALADYN project (New geochemical approach to reconstruct tropical palaeo-atmospheric dynamics). Her research will focus on tracking spatial shifts in the Atlantic Intertropical Convergence Zone over the last 22 kya (last glacial maximum). For this, she will analyze marine sedimentary archives with geochemical proxies.