A team led by Maya Gomes, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has received a Discovery Award from Johns Hopkins University. Given to interdisciplinary teams across the university, Discovery Awards are meant to catalyze innovative work on important problems.

Prof. Gomes’ project builds on her longstanding interest in the global sulfur cycle and will involve Prof. Sarah Hörst from the EPS Department and Prof. Sarah Preheim from the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. The project focuses on changes in the isotopic composition of sulfur in the rock record, which are often used to draw conclusions about the evolution of oceanic biological productivity and circulation. Prof. Gomes and her collaborators will explore whether the current paradigm of interpreting this record is flawed because of failure to consider different sources of sulfur.