Dr. Laura Streib

Laura Streib is in the joint Israeli-North American postdoctoral track, conducting research both at the University of Haifa’s Department of Marine Geosciences and the University of Kentucky’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Her research uses lake sediments to study past climate and environments. Her work as part of the Zuckerman program centers on Lake Tanganyika in eastern Africa, the world’s longest and second deepest lake. It serves as a vital source of protein, fresh water, and economic development for 12 million people in Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In recent decades, the lake has experienced reductions in biodiversity, natural habitat, and economic utility. Dr. Streib studies the history of the lake over the past 2000 years, hoping to understand whether past perturbations that impacted fish populations were caused by natural climatic and environmental variability or by human activity. With the ultimate goal of producing data that can contribute to a more stable future for communities that rely on Lake Tanganyika.

For her PhD in Earth Sciences at Syracuse University, Dr. Streib studied a 1.4-million-year-old drill core from Lake Malawi, also in eastern Africa. This record represents the longest most continuous sediment archive from the continental tropics. She generated a chronology for this core and used diatoms and geochemical data to study climatic change. Dr. Streib has also taught college courses on climate change, water resources, and natural disasters. She has extensive science outreach experience and has given presentations to school groups, helped with geoscience field trips, and participated in teaching workshops. She has collected data and samples from lakes around the globe including Lake Victoria in eastern Africa, Convict Lake in California, and Oneida Lake in New York.