Rate My Professor Branwen Williams

Branwen Williams is the George R. Roberts Professor of Integrated Sciences: Environmental Science at Claremont McKenna College, where she also serves as Director of the Roberts Environmental Center. She holds a B.Sc. in Marine and Freshwater Biology (honors) from the University of Guelph (2003), an M.Sc. in Biology from GEOTOP at the University of Quebec at Montreal (2005), and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from Ohio State University (2009). After completing her Ph.D., Williams was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences at the University of Toronto Mississauga (2009-2011). She joined the Keck Science Department of the Claremont Colleges in 2011 as Assistant Professor of Environmental Science, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017, and was installed in her current endowed chair position recently. Her research specializes in developing and interpreting paleoenvironmental records from geochemical proxies in marine calcifiers such as corals and coralline algae, spanning from the tropics to the poles, to quantify natural and anthropogenic drivers of oceanographic changes including acidification, temperature, and productivity.

Williams has been recognized with several honors, including the Mary W. Johnson Faculty Achievement Award (Scholarship category) from Scripps College (2019), Claremont Faculty Leadership Program Fellowship (2018), National Geographic Explorer (2015 and 2018), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Postgraduate Scholarships (2006-2009), AWIS Educational Foundation Goodman Predoctoral Award (2008), and Geological Society of America Harold T. Stearns Fellowship Award (2006). Notable publications include "The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification" (Science, 2012; 1,302 citations), "Deep-water Antipatharians: Proxies of Environmental Change?" (Geology, 2006), "Coralline Algal Growth-Increment Widths Archive North Atlantic Climate Variability" (Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2011), and "Calibration of the pH-δ¹¹B and Temperature-Mg/Li Proxies in the Long-Lived High-Latitude Crustose Coralline Red Alga Clathromorphum compactum" (Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 2019). She serves as an editor for Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems and has contributed to public outreach through National Geographic features and lectures such as "Inhabiting Earth: Stories from a Climate Scientist" at the CMC Athenaeum. Her work advances understanding of marine responses to climate change and informs resilience strategies for affected communities.