Environmental Internship Program - 2023 Booklet

Naisha Sylvestre ’25
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Certificates: Global Health and Health Policy,
Latin American Studies
CLIMATE AND
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
PROJECT TITLE
Metal Isotopes in Ancient
Carbonates
ORGANIZATION(S)
Higgins Lab,
Department of
Geosciences,
Princeton University
LOCATION(S)
Princeton, New Jersey
MENTOR(S)
John Higgins,
Professor of Geosciences;
Matthew Nadeau, Ph.D.
candidate, Geosciences
My project’s objective was to gather data on the
isotopic carbon and oxygen content of ancient
carbonate samples across time and ocean
depth. This isotopic data will allow us to infer
whether differences in sample composition are
due to local processes of rock formation or more
indicative of global paleoclimate. The carbonate
rocks studied may preserve information from
ancient surface environments about their local
climate and ecosystems, and thus may serve as
proxy archives of paleoclimate at various times
in the ancient past. I analyzed ancient carbonate
samples from a region in the Pacific Ocean by
first using imaging techniques to identify each
sample’s composition and then performing mass
spectroscopy to determine isotopic composition
and concentration. Using isotopic records in
this manner is somewhat new in the field, and I
enjoyed getting to work with people at the cutting
edge of paleoclimate research. I learned many lab
skills including experimental design and how to
operate seminal technology such as automatic
ion chromatography and mass spectroscopy
machines. I will utilize the skills I developed in
my junior independent work, senior thesis and
beyond Princeton.
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