Heather Graven

Graven earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from California Institute of Technology in 2001.[1] She won the Dean's Cup for contributions to student life.[2] She earned a PhD from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2008. Her PhD thesis, Advancing the use of radiocarbon in studies of global and regional carbon cycling with high precision measurements of ¹⁴C in CO₂ from the Scripps CO₂ Program, was assessed by Ralph Keeling.[3][4]

Graven studies greenhouse gas emissions.[5] In 2008 she joined ETH Zurich as a postdoctoral researcher.[6] She returned to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2011, researching variations in the amplitude of CO₂ over the course of seasons.[7] Since 2013, she has led the Carbon Cycle research group at Imperial College London.[8]

Graven's research focuses on measuring atmospheric CO₂ and CH₄.[9] The emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels can compromise the effectiveness of radiocarbon dating.[10] She is also interested in the global uptake and cycling of carbon by plants, soil and the ocean.[9] Her team use numerical models to predict the impact of climate change on the global carbon cycle.[11] She is the project lead on several NASA funded projects, quantifying fossil and biospheric CO₂ fluxes in California.[12][13]

She took part in the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2017 Annual Meeting, discussing Global Climate Science Imperatives.[14] Graven contributes regularly to the discussion of climate change in the media.[15][16][17][18][19][20][21]