Two scientists at the University of California, Riverside, have been elected fellows of the American Geophysical Union, or AGU, a recognition that honors “scientific eminence in the earth and space sciences.”

Marilyn Fogel, the Wilbur W. Mayhew Endowed Chair in Geo-Ecology, and Timothy Lyons, Distinguished Professor of Biogeochemistry, will be honored at a ceremony and banquet during the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C., in December. Both professors are faculty in the Department of Earth Sciences in UCR’s College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. Only one in 1,000 members is elected to AGU fellowship each year.

“This recognition is well deserved for the contributions of these two exceptional scholars, who are working at the leading-edge of science,” said Kathryn Uhrich, dean of the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.

Fogel’s research focuses on tracing ecological and geochemical processes on Earth and in planetary materials and environments using stable isotopes of biologically important elements. Her research demonstrates how much we can learn about our past, present, and future world through the remains of living organisms beneath Earth’s surface, including predictions about climate change into the next century and insight into how life on the planet began. As director of UCR’s EDGE Institute, Fogel is guiding research on global environmental change and crises.

Lyons’ work explores the evolving ocean and atmosphere and their roles in the origin and evolution of life. As director of UCR’s NASA-funded Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center, he is known for developing tools to reconstruct ephemeral landscapes of lost worlds using chemical fingerprints locked in ancient rocks. These stony archives are rich in direct and inferred traces of ancient life — known as biosignatures — that are guiding NASA’s search for life beyond our planet and solar system.

Fogel and Lyons are among 62 new fellows chosen this year. Read an announcement and a list of fellows on the AGU website.