Rate My Professor Ariel Anbar

Ariel Anbar is a President's Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the School of Molecular Sciences at Arizona State University, where he contributes to geoscience through pioneering research in geochemistry and astrobiology. He earned an A.B. in Geological Sciences and Chemistry from Harvard College in 1989, followed by an M.S. in Geochemistry in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Geochemistry in 1996, both from the California Institute of Technology. His academic career began as an Assistant Professor from 1996 to 2002 and Associate Professor from 2002 to 2004 in the Departments of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Chemistry at the University of Rochester. Joining Arizona State University thereafter, he was promoted to Professor in 2009 and elevated to President's Professor in 2013. Anbar has held leadership roles including Director of the ASU Center for Education Through eXploration since 2015, Co-Director of the ASU PlanetWorks Initiative since 2015, Director of the ASU Astrobiology Program from 2009 to 2016, and Distinguished Sustainability Scientist at the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability since 2014.

Anbar's research explores Earth's past and future as an inhabited world, focusing on the chemical evolution of its atmosphere and oceans using non-traditional stable isotope systems such as molybdenum, uranium, iron, and calcium isotopes as paleoredox proxies. His group investigates events like the Great Oxidation Event, marine anoxia episodes, and biospheric oxygenation, with applications extending to astrobiology, environmental geochemistry, and even human health through metallomics. He is the author or co-author of over 100 refereed publications, including "Fully oxygenated water columns over continental shelves before the Great Oxidation Event" (Ostrander et al., Nature Geoscience, 2019), "Extensive marine anoxia during the terminal Ediacaran Period" (Zhang et al., Science Advances, 2018), "Congruent Permian-Triassic δ²³⁸U records at Panthalassic and Tethyan sites" (Zhang et al., Geology, 2018), and "Good Golly, Why Moly? The Stable Isotope Geochemistry of Molybdenum" (Kendall et al., Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, 2017). Anbar's innovations in STEM education through digital exploration have been recognized with awards such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor award in 2014. His scholarly impact includes major honors: Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (2021), Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America (2020), Science Innovation Award from the European Association of Geochemistry (2019), and Fellow of the Geochemical Society and European Association of Geochemistry (2015).