Julie Brigham-Grette


Julie Brigham-Grette is an American glacial geologist and professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research focuses on Arctic paleoclimate and Quaternary glacial history, including work on lake and marine sediment records in Beringia and the Bering Strait region.

Early life and education

Brigham-Grette earned a BA in geology from Albion College in 1976, graduating magna cum laude. She completed an MS in geology at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1980 with a thesis on Quaternary sediments at Broughton Island, Baffin Island, and a PhD at the same institution in 1985 on the Gubik Formation of Alaska’s Arctic Coastal Plain. Her graduate work applied amino acid dating to carbonate fossils in support of Quaternary correlation and sea-level history.

Research and career

Brigham-Grette joined the faculty at UMass Amherst in 1987. She has led or co-led multiple field campaigns in Arctic Russia and Alaska and has been a co-director of the Joseph Hartshorn Quaternary Laboratory at UMass.
A significant part of her work involves the Lake El’gygytgyn Drilling Project in northeastern Russia. The project recovered a continuous sedimentary sequence that has been used to reconstruct Arctic climate over the last 2.8 million years. Earlier project overviews describe the logistics and objectives of the drilling effort.
Brigham-Grette has held leadership roles in polar and Quaternary science organizations. She was appointed chair of the Polar Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014, and has served in AGU governance, among other committee and panel roles.

Research contributions

Brigham-Grette’s work has applied amino-acid geochronology to Quaternary stratigraphy and sea-level history, and contributed to reconstructions of Arctic climate variability using lacustrine records from Lake El’gygytgyn. She has been principal investigator on National Science Foundation awards related to Arctic paleoclimate and undergraduate research training in Svalbard.

Teaching and outreach

At UMass Amherst, Brigham-Grette has taught courses in glacial geology, Quaternary stratigraphy, geochronology, and oceanography. She has also participated in public and educator outreach related to Arctic climate, including talks and media appearances connected to the Lake El’gygytgyn project.

Honors