Alaska's Natural Wonders: Denali National Park to Kenai Fjords

Patrick Burkhart received his doctorate from Lehigh University and has been a professor of geology for several decades. His expertise lies in the science of groundwater, while he also holds a deep passion for geomorphology, the study of landscapes. He revels in the history of exploration, with particular focus upon the quests of Ernest Shackleton and Charles Darwin—the latter of whom he has written and lectured about extensively. He has an affinity for the cryosphere—frozen places at high latitude and high altitude. 

Brent Garry is a geologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he studies lava flows and volcanoes on Earth and compares them with similar landscapes on the Moon and Mars. He holds geology degrees from The College of William and Mary and the University of Kentucky, and a PhD from the University at Buffalo. He joined NASA in 2012 after a postdoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Today, Brent serves as project scientist for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), NASA’s satellite mapping the Moon, and for the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, coordinating science operations for missions on the lunar surface. Earlier in his career, he was a participating scientist on NASA’s Dawn mission to asteroid Vesta and supported the LRO mission, bringing a broad perspective on how rocky worlds are shaped over time. He also served on NASA’s Desert RATS team, living in prototype lunar rovers in Arizona for up to two weeks during simulated expeditions to the Moon.

A seasoned field geologist, Brent has worked in volcanic regions across the U.S., including Hawai‘i, California, New Mexico, Idaho, and Oregon, as well as internationally in Iceland, the Galápagos, the Caribbean, and along the East Pacific Rise. Since 2014, he has traveled with Smithsonian Journeys as an expert, including several tours to Australia and New Zealand. When he’s not in the field, Brent enjoys spending time with his family and scuba diving.

Katryn Wiese is a professor of geology, paleontology, and oceanography with 30 years of experience in research, teaching, field explorations, and community outreach. She studied at Caltech, Oregon State University, and Stanford University, and focused her early research on volcanic processes in Iceland, Hawaii, the seafloor around the Azores and the Galápagos Islands, and the tablelands of Eastern Australia. She has journeyed around the world as a scientist and field guide including the Americas, Antarctica, the Arctic, Australia, Europe, and the islands of the Pacific.

Katryn’s primary focus is engaging students of all ages and backgrounds in exploring natural phenomena, from reading the stories in the rocks to evaluating the impact of the Earth and its oceans on our climate, culture, and society. She shares that work through her Earth Rocks! YouTube video channel, her library of open-source earth science lessons and lab manuals, and also through the “Story of Time and Life”—a four-floor exhibit of dinosaurs, fossils, and meteorites that she installed and curates at City College of San Francisco in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences. She recently joined the faculty at the College of San Mateo, near her home on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. Katryn is an avid hiker and kayaker, and is most at home outdoors exploring erupting volcanoes, glacially carved fjords, fossil and mineral sites, and natural spaces off the beaten path.

Carola Stearns is a field geologist and geophysicist with more than 40 years of experience enthusiastically sharing her fascination with the Earth and how it works. She earned a PhD at the University of Michigan, has worked in exploration for major oil companies, taught at universities, and maintains a research affiliation with the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan. Carola has worked with archaeologists on both prehistoric and classical sites around the Mediterranean and in the southwestern U.S. Her diverse research interests include tectonics as well as climatic geomorphology, especially as it relates to human history. She has lectured as a park ranger at the Grand Canyon, on trips for the UM Alumni Association, and in Ann Arbor training docents for the botanical gardens, arboretum and the public school’s environmental education program. Currently she works part-time as an interpretive guide in Santa Fe. 

Dr. Arianna Soldati is a volcanologist and science communicator who has been fascinated with volcanoes since early childhood. With a focus on the dynamics of lava flows and their interaction with the built environment, her work takes her to field sites all over the world: from Hawaii to Iceland, from La Réunion to La Palma, and from Costa Rica to New Zealand. Arianna was selected as the 2023-2024 Geological Society of America’s Science Communication Fellow. In that role, she made the latest geological discoveries published in academic journals accessible to the general public. She has delivered over 50 public lectures, led countless science engagement activities, and funded her own traveling outreach program. Currently, Arianna is an assistant professor at North Carolina State University.

Maya Wei-Haas is an award-winning science reporter who writes about all things science with a particular affection for rocks and reactions. She works as a freelancer for a range of outlets, but before setting off on her own she was a staff writer for National Geographic for nearly five years and an assistant editor at Smithsonian digital news for nearly three years. 

Maya holds a BA in geology from Smith College and a PhD in Earth science from The Ohio State University. She has traveled the world in the name of science, scooping ice melt from the top of Antarctic glaciers, hauling up sediments from Svalbard lakes, and monitoring water chemistry in Alaskan rivers. This journey helped her realize that the part of science she loves most is communication. She made the jump to journalism as a fellow for the AAAS Mass Media program. Now she's working to bring these types of adventures and the science that surrounds us to the general public.

Her work was awarded American Geophysical Union’s David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism (2020) and the American Society of Civil Engineers Excellence in Journalism Award (2021). In addition to science news and features, she authored the solar system section of the National Geographic Stargazer’s Atlas. She also published her first children’s book, What a Rock Can Reveal, which guides young readers through the exciting stories hidden in stone. She is currently writing a book for National Geographic about gems, minerals, and rocks around the world.