Rate My Professor Joanne Muller

Joanne Muller, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Marine & Earth Sciences within The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University, specializing in Geoscience. She joined the faculty in 2011 as Assistant Professor of Paleoclimatology, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017, and advanced to full Professor in the 2022-2023 academic year. In August 2026, she became Eminent Scholar at the Whitaker Institute for STEM Education. Prior to FGCU, Muller served as Sir Keith Murdoch and Comer Postdoctoral Fellow from 2007 to 2009 and Visiting Scientist from 2009 to 2011 in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where she researched paleoclimate changes in low-latitude regions. She also served as Marine Science Program Leader at FGCU from 2013 to 2015. Muller earned her Ph.D. in 2007 from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at James Cook University, with a thesis reconstructing climate change over the last 55,000 years using the Lynch’s Crater peat mire record in northeast Queensland, Australia. She holds a B.Sc. Honours (First Class) from James Cook University in 2003 and a B.Sc. in Earth Sciences from the University of Technology, Sydney in 2002.

A paleoclimatologist, Muller employs sedimentological and geochemical proxies to decipher past environmental changes in terrestrial and marine systems, with research interests in monsoon and El Niño-Southern Oscillation strength, past ocean circulation, and hurricane reconstructions (paleotempestology) in relation to global climate change. Her influential publications include "Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United States: 1900–2022" (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society), "Accumulated Cyclone Energy-Based Tropical Cyclone Return Periods in Florida" (2023), "The geologic record of Hurricane Irma in a southwest Florida back-barrier lagoon" (2021), "Recent Advances in the Emerging Field of Paleotempestology" (2017 book chapter), and "Strengthening of the Northeast Monsoon over the Flores Sea, Indonesia, at the time of Heinrich Event 1" (Geology, 2012). Muller has advised graduate theses on prehistoric and historic hurricane landfalls in Florida estuaries, led geology course-based undergraduate research experiences, and contributed to advancing paleotempestology records for southwest Florida coasts, enhancing assessments of tropical cyclone risks and coastal resilience.