Brent was born and raised in Texas where he rode horses and raised show pigs. After serving nearly eight years in the Marine Corps, he earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 and 2010. As an undergraduate, Brent researched high-energy (~ MJ) electromagnetic launchers at the Institute for Advanced Technology, imagining that the technology might one day be useful for returning samples to Earth from a lunar base. He spent his first two summers of graduate school working with the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, researching glacier dynamics and applications of radar remote sensing to marine oil spill response. Through further research on glacier dynamics and kinematic remote sensing, Brent received a PhD in Geophysics from the California Institute of Technology in 2016 under the advisement of Mark Simons. He went on to be an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK, working with Hilmar Gudmundsson. In January 2018, Brent joined the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in July 2023.
Bryan Riel
Research Scientist
office: 54-318
Students
Joanna Millstein
PhD candidate, MIT-WHOI Joint Program
office: 54-313
Joanna is a graduate student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Geology & Geophysics. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2017 with a degree in Earth Sciences, where she was introduced to remote sensing techniques and glaciological field work. In her free time, Joanna can be found bicycling or fly fishing.
Meghana Ranganathan
PhD candidate, MIT EAPS (PAOC)
office: 54-313
Meghana is a graduate student in Climate Science at MIT in the Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences department. Her work focuses on the mechanics of shear margins in Antarctic ice streams. She graduated from Swarthmore College in 2017, where she studied mathematics. She spends most of her time outside of science reading and writing.
Faye Margaret Hendley Elgart
PhD candidate, MIT EAPS (PAOC)
office: 54-313
Faye is a graduate student in Climate Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is from New York City and graduated from Cornell University in 2016 with a degree in Engineering Physics. She is interested in the dynamics of complex systems spanning multiple length- and time-scales, and the intersection of glaciology, oceanography, and planetary science.
Justin Linick
PhD student, MIT EAPS (Geophysics)
office: 54-313
Fiona Clerc
PhD candidate, MIT-WHOI Joint Program
office: 54-814
Mila Lubeck
PhD student, MIT EAPS (Geophysics)
office: 54-
Kasturi Shah
PhD candidate, MIT EAPS (PAOC)
office: 54-1713
Erik Tamre
PhD candidate, MIT EAPS (PGGG)
office: 54-1027
Sarah Wells-Moran
Undergraduate, Wellesley College
Lizz Ultee
Postdoctoral Associate 2018-2021
Now faculty at Middlebury College
Julia Wilcots
PhD candidate, EAPS (PGGG)
office: 54-1027
Brindha Kanniah
Master of Science in EAPS (2019)