Bess Koffman

Geochemist and climate scientist Bess Koffman has a vibrant research program that analyzes mineral dust and volcanic ash preserved in layers of glacial ice. She uses ice cores samples to reconstruct past atmospheric circulation patterns and the impact of dust and ash deposition on marine ecosystems.

Koffman has published 10 papers in leading journals—six as lead author—and won more than $1.1 million in grant support for her work. She is a well-known scholar in polar climate and ice core science. Her work requires large, inter-institutional collaborations, and many of her publications include scholars from three of the top paleoclimate research groups in the world. Koffman is the nation’s only ice core scientist at a liberal arts college. She involves students in every aspect of her research and helped create a new year-long, team-taught course that teaches introductory chemistry and geology.

Koffman arrived at Colby in 2017 after four years as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and Dartmouth College. She received her Ph.D. in earth and climate sciences from the University of Maine and her B.A. in geology at Carleton College.