Doctor of Science
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June 11, 2022
An international expert in the study of past climate and sea-level change, Andrea Lynn Dutton ’95 is a professor in the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research focuses on establishing the behavior of sea level and polar ice sheets during past warm periods to better inform us about future sea-level rise.
Dutton is a 2019 winner of a MacArthur Fellowship and was named one of the “25 People Shaping the Future” by Rolling Stone in 2017. She has been a Fulbright scholar and is a fellow of the Geological Society of America. In addition to being a researcher and teacher, Dutton is active in science communication on climate change and sea-level rise; she is heavily quoted in popular media, has appeared frequently in TV documentaries, lectures widely concerning the dynamics of Earth’s climate system, and has testified on matters related to climate change before a U.S. Senate subcommittee.
Dutton has served in leadership positions for several disciplinary working groups, such as those studying past sea level and Quaternary climates, and is currently the first vice chair of the geochronology division of the Geological Society of America. Within the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), she recently served on the committee that wrote Earth in Time (2020), the decadal survey report for the Division of Earth Sciences of the National Science Foundation (NSF). She also chaired the NASEM committee charged with organizing a workshop to explore new research directions for the Paleo Perspectives on Climate Change program at the NSF.
At Amherst, Dutton earned her B.A. in music and went on to receive an M.S. and Ph.D. in geology from the University of Michigan. She was a postdoctoral fellow and research fellow at the Australian National University and was for- merly an assistant and associate professor at the University of Florida.