Porter ’15 Works as Diversity Intern with Ocean Drilling Program

Over the summer, Nishaila Porter ’15 worked on a research project as a 2013 Diversity Intern at Columbia University. The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program and the U.S. Implementing Organization cosponsored the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory Summer Intern Program at Columbia University for the second consecutive year.

The goal of the Columbia University Diversity Internship is to “expose minority students to careers in scientific ocean drilling by providing them with a 10–12 week educational and career building experience.” Current interns work with mentors on research projects using scientific ocean drilling data.

While working on the project, titled “Which Marine Fossil Assemblages Best Match Ice Core Assemblages,” Porter used samples from sites with sediments of Eocene age that are rich in diatom and compared them to the diatom assemblage in the GISP2 ice core that was collected in Greenland in order to determine the likely source of diatoms in the ice core.

Porter’s advisor is Suzanne O’Connell, professor of earth and environmental sciences.