Jane Willenbring, an assistant professor in the School of Arts & Sciences’ department of earth & environmental science, is the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award.

Dr. Willenbring will continue to explore the use of beryllium isotopes in dating soils. In the lab, she and her students will test beryllium adsorption and desorption on a variety of minerals under varying conditions, then test their findings using a field sample collected from the Amazon River basin that could reflect the major changes in landscape that have occurred over the last 20 million years—namely, the rise and erosion of the Andes Mountains.

With this grant, Dr. Willenbring will continue to organize Soil Kitchen events, during which community members bring in soil samples from their yards and test them for metal contamination. If levels are high, she and her students provide information on how to mitigate the effects of having contaminated soil. She has held the events annually in Philadelphia since 2012 and will unveil a nationwide network of similar events in the coming years.

Using results from the soil testing, she and her students will use publicly available records of blood lead testing of Philadelphia’s children to identify associations between soil lead and blood lead levels. She will test samples for beryllium to see if this metal is a problem in Philadelphia neighborhoods. She will also train sixth-grade earth science teachers in Philadelphia schools to engage students in lessons that relate community gardens, often planted at the schools, to the science of food, plants, soil and sustainability.