天美传媒

Odeta Qafoku is chemist with the Biogeochemical Transformations team. Qafoku is an environmental soil scientist and geochemist with 20 years of research experience on a broad range of projects in the topics of soil science, geochemistry, geochemical and thermodynamic modeling, mineral synthesis, organic and contaminant interaction with soil minerals, CO2 sequestration, and mineral weathering. Her resent research interests are in studying organic mineral interactions using methods that extend from nano- to macroscale; studying iron mineral transformations induced by reductive reactions; studying mineral incipient weathering as function of biological inputs and environmental changes, and applying scanning electron microscopy to study reactivity and transformation at reaction boundaries.

 (he/him) addresses the literal foundation of all cropping systems: soils. He advances how we monitor and manage soils as natural capital. His research team evaluates how human activities can enhance or compromise soil services to human societies, with an emphasis on food security from urban and rural agroecosystems in the U.S. Midwest and East Africa.
More information: Margenot is an Associate Professor of Soil and Biogeochemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. With a keen focus on the intricate dynamics of soils, his research delves into the realms of Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy, soil fertility in East Africa, urban agriculture, phosphorus, and soil organic matter and enzymes. He is dedicated to advancing the understanding of soils as the foundation of cropping systems, and his mission involves not only monitoring and managing soils as natural capital but also assessing the impact of human activities on soil services critical to global food security. Margenot's research has contributed to insights into soil health metrics and spectroscopy applications, and he has also authored chapters in notable books such as "Phosphorus Fertilization and Management in Soils of Sub-Saharan Africa." He was also a recognized U.S. Borlaug Fellow in Global Food Security in 2014. Before joining the University of Illinois faculty, Margenot received his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Connecticut College in 2010. He then moved on to complete his Ph.D. in Soils and Biogeochemistry at the University of California, Davis.
Affiliations: Margenot is an associate professor and faculty  specialist in the  in the  (ACES) at the . He is an associate director and founding member of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center and affiliate faculty in the ; and the . 

Dr. Humes has had the good fortune of having a diverse career both within and outside of academia. She has worked for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on space-based geodesy and spacecraft tracking, held a graduate fellowship at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in remote sensing, and served as a Postdoctral Research Assistant at the USDA/Agricultural Research Service Hydrology Lab in Beltsville, MD. Her early research involved field work in remote sensing of land surface characteristics that control land/atmosphere interactions. In this work, she participated in numerous interdisciplinary field campaigns in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, France and Niger.

Martha Cary (Missy) Eppes, Ph.D. is a professor of Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she has worked since 2003. She holds BS and MS degrees in Geology, with theses focused on soils and geomorphology, and a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from the University of New Mexico – where she researched the influence of soil development and weathering on the response of landscapes to tectonic perturbations and faulting.
Her current research interests include mechanical weathering processes, soil geomorphology and Quaternary geology of post-glacial landscapes, and soil geomorphology of the piedmont of the eastern United States. Since 2009, she has been the recipient of $1.49 million in external grants from sources including NSF and NASA; $975,339 were awarded as Lead-PI and $515,296 as Co-PI. She has served as first author of impactful articles in prestigious Nature Communications, Geology, Geophysical Research Letters, Reviews of Geophysics, and GSA Bulletin.
Her most recent body of published work has focused on mechanical weathering processes and the insight that fracture mechanics concepts can provide to the understanding of natural rock fracture. Eppes and Keanini (2017) recognized and quantified for the first time a previously unrecognized role of climate in subcritical rock fracture in the context of Earth surface processes; Eppes et al., 2020 verified that study’s theoretical models with field data. For this work, Eppes was recipient of the 2020 Geological Society of America (GSA) Kirk Bryan Award for Research Excellence – GSA’s highest honor in her discipline.  Eppes became an elected Fellow of GSA in 2018 and leader of the Quaternary Geology & Geomorphology Division of GSA from 2018-2021, culminating in Division Chair. She has been research advisor to 3 PhD students, 20 MS students and ~106 undergraduate students (2004-present) – and published 16 papers with student co-authors since 2010.
In 2022, Eppes was the head co-leader of an international, interdisciplinary conference (PRF2022 Progressive Failure of Brittle Rocks) bringing together the fields of surface processes and rock mechanics.   In 2022-2023 she served in highly prestigious positions as a Fulbright Research Scholar and a University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study Fellow. For “groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research linking rock fracture mechanics and surface processes, and building new bridges between communities," Eppes was chosen to receive the 2022 AGU Earth and Planetary Surface Processes Group’s Marguerite T. Williams Award.