About
Dr. Gerald Rustic is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geology at Rowan University. He is the Director of the Graduate Program in Geology and the Principal Investigator and founder of the Rowan Oceanographic - Paleoceanographic Investigation Center (TROPIC).
He is a paleoclimatologist and palaeoceanographer. His main research interests are in the major modes of climate variability and how those modes relate to large scale background climate conditions. He is interested in climate variability on human, centennial-to-millennial, and glacial-interglacial timescales. His focus is on the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the largest source of inter-annual climate variability on planet Earth. Dr. Rustic also looks at tropical variability in the Atlantic Ocean (e.g., the Atlantic Zonal mode or the Atlantic Niño) and is keenly interested in the mean climatic background state of the surface and subsurface and how this relates to the major modes of climate variability.
Dr. Rustic has a BS in Biology and Geology from the University of Rochester, an MS in Environmental Science from Rutgers University, and received his PhD from the City University of New York in Earth and Environmental Science (2015). He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, NY for two years working on ENSO's relationship to background climate conditions over the last 300,000 years.
Dr. Rustic teaches undergraduate courses in Paleoclimatology, climate change, climate variability and societal impacts, ocean-atmosphere interactions, and Quaternary geology. He began the department of Geology speaker series and colloquium, and has taught Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Invertebrate paleontology and several special topics courses. He has mentored 8 undergraduate research students from Geology and Environmental Science who have successfully completed Research Experience credits and has had 11 undergraduate research assistants working in his lab.
Dr. Rustic and the TROPIC group use geochemical and isotopic analysis to infer past climate conditions. At TROPIC we use inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) to determine precise trace elemental ratios in ocean carbonates for palaeoceanographic reconstructions. Our lab is equipped with a Thermo Scientific iCAP 6500 ICP-OES that enables us to obtain Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca, and other trace elemental ratios from aggregate and individual foraminifera specimens. Our lab is equipped to process foraminifera for analysis from sediments to samples, with facilities for isolation, preparation, and chemical cleaning of foraminifera samples.
We also use mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and laser ablation techniques (LA-ICP-MS) at to obtain highly detailed measurements of trace elements. We also use stable isotope ratios (δ18O, δ13C) on both aggregate and individual foraminifera specimens for our paleoclimate reconstructions. We have also done analysis using organic chemistry techniques to measure long-chain ketone unsaturation indices (Uk'37) to reconstruct past sea surface temperatures.
TROPIC is expanding its analytical abilities into whole rock geochemistry, utilizing both dissolution techniques and flux fusion methods to characterize major, minor, trace, and rare earth elements in geologic samples.
He joined the newly formed Department of Geology in the School of Earth and Environment at Rowan University in 2017. The Department was founded in 2016 and is the academic steward of the Jean and Ric Edelman Fossil Park and Museum, a K/Pg boundary fossil site in New Jersey.
Dr. Rustic is currently the Director of the PhD Program in Geology and has two PhD student advisees. He teaches graduate courses in Paleoclimate and research methods, Ethics and Communication, Proposal writing, and Fundamental Research. 
