Dr. Austin J. Chadwick

BIOGRAPHY:

Austin Chadwick is the incoming Paros Assistant Professor of Geohazards and Climate Mitigation at Columbia Climate School. He received his BS in Applied Geophysics in 2014 from the University of California, Los Angeles, receiving Departmental Highest Honors. In 2019, he received his PhD in Geology from the California Institute of Technology. From 2019 - 2021, he was appointed as a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Minnesota. In 2022 - 2023, he was appointed as a Postdoctoral Scholar at UC Santa Barbara Earth Research Institute. From 2023 to 2025, he has been appointed as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist, and Lamont Fellow at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The focus of Dr. Chadwick’s research is to explain how river systems evolve, shape landscapes, and respond to our rapidly changing world. He has 10+ years of experience quantifying fluvial processes using a blend of theoretical modeling, remote sensing, laboratory flume experiments, and geologic field techniques; and has contributed to interdisciplinary field campaigns on the Mississippi River (LA, USA), the Koyukuk River (AK, USA), the Yellow River (China), and the Ganges-Brahmaputra river system (Bangladesh). His work is defined by two common threads. First, he seeks answers to fundamental questions about the origin and organization of landscapes on Earth and other planets. Second, he investigates how rivers today are responding to human activities and global climate change—especially in our vulnerable coastal zones and cryosphere—to address twenty-first-century concerns about geologic hazards and environmental sustainability. His work interweaves these fundamental and practical threads in targeted research topics, including 1) the evolution of deltaic landscapes, 2) the mobility of river channels, and 3) the connection between rivers, oceans, and the shallow subsurface.