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Rich Pancost, PhD, was Director of the University of Bristol Cabot Institute and is now Head of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences.  He studies organic molecules in organisms, mud, and rocks to understand the flow of chemical energy through the Earth's coupled biological and geological system.  He uses those same molecules to reconstruct how Earth's climate has changed over millions of years, in order to put into context the impact humans have had on our planet.

 

“I study how the Earth system has changed in the past and could change in the future. And, why."

 

Pancost was a scientific advisor to Bristol when it was the European Green Capital and contributed to its Resilience Strategy and One City Approach.

 

Dr. Pancost earned his PhD in Geosciences in 1998 from Penn State University.  During his PhD, he worked with Katherine Freeman. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Professor J. S. Sinninghe Damsté at the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, and he moved to Bristol in 2000.