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	At present, I am working on several projects – and there is room for graduate student research, so please contact me if you are interested! Here are some of my current research projects.
The geological record provides the opportunity to reconstruct past climates, including normal climate variability, extreme climate events, and changes in mean climate state. At present, I am working on the major greenhouse-to-icehouse climate transition that occurred in the late Eocene through early Oligocene. Having completed a study on the rapid global cooling and Antarctic ice sheet expansion that occurred ~ 33.5 myrs ago (Katz et al., 2008), I am now conducting high-resolution studies of the deep ocean changes from ~40 to 33 myrs ago that led up to this major transition, with emphasis on understanding the causal relationships among system components of climate change.
For more than a decade, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program has been drilling boreholes along the coastal plain and continental slope of New Jersey, with a primary goal to reconstruct global sea level back to ~33 myrs ago and to document the sedimentary response to sea level change. I participated in the first two ODP cruises of this program as the shipboard benthic foraminiferal specialist, and I have worked as an onsite sedimentologist at New Jersey onshore coastal plain drilling locations. I am the benthic foraminiferal specialist in the final phase of the offshore transect drilling, completed in Summer 2009 on the inner continental shelf off New Jersey (IODP Expedition 313). Benthic foraminiferal assemblages provide the best means to reconstruct paleobathymetry, which will be integrated with biostratigraphy, lithostratigraphy, geophysical well logging, and seismic stratigraphy to establish a sequence stratigraphic framework and long-term sea-level reconstruction. This study will be similar to the project that I completed on the outer continental shelf in the same region (Katz et al. 2003).
The Triassic was an important period in Earth History, bracketed by major extinction events and large carbon isotopic excursions. In my ongoing studies of the geological carbon cycle, I am analyzing carbon isotopes in carbonates (&delta¹³C_carb) and organic matter (&delta¹³C_org) from Triassic circum-Arctic and circum-Tethys sections. The first goal of this project is to construct Triassic &delta¹³C_carb and &delta¹³C_org reference curves that will provide an important time-scale tool by establishing global &delta¹³C correlation points. A subsequent goal is to build on previous modelling efforts for the Jurassic – Cenozoic, ~205 myrs ago to present (Katz et al. 2005, 2007; Falkowski et al. 2005), to model the Triassic carbon and oxygen cycles using &delta¹³C_carb, &delta¹³C_org, and published &delta³⁴S_sulfate.