Catherine Smith,^1,* Sophie Warny,^2,** Amelia E. Shevenell,^1,*** Sean P.S. Gulick,^3,**** Amy Leventer<sup>4,*****

1</sup>aCollege of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL, USA
²bDepartment of Geology and Geophysics and Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University, Bat
³cInstitute of Geophysics and Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austi
⁴dDepartment of Geology, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY, USA

^*Catherine Smith is currently working as a curator with the International Ocean Discovery Program at Texas A&M University. Catherine was born in New York and attended Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, where she received a B.A. in Geosciences. She received her M.S. in Marine Science at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science in St. Petersburg, Florida and trained in palynology at the LSU Center for Excellence in Palynology (CENEX) as a visiting researcher in 2016. While at USF she participated in a cruise to the Sabrina Coast aboard the RV/IB Nathaniel B. Palmer where the cores for this project were collected. She presented her preliminary results at the 2015 Annual Geological Society of America-American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists (AASP) joint meeting in Baltimore where she received the Vaughn Bryant Best Student Poster award and Best Overall Poster by AASP.
^**Sophie Warny is an Associate Professor and the AASP Chair of palynology in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and a curator at the Museum of Natural Science at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. Sophie received her PhD from the Université Catholique de Louvain, in Belgium, working with Jean-Pierre Suc; her doctoral dissertation was on the Messinian Salinity Crisis. Since graduating, she has specialized in Antarctic palynology and worked on Antarctic projects such as ANDRILL SMS, SHALDRIL and WISSARD. In 2011, she received the National Science Foundation CAREER award to support her research in Antarctica. In addition to her research, Sophie teaches historical geology, palaeobotany and micropalaeontology. Since being hired at LSU, Sophie has graduated eighteen master and doctoral students; most are employed either in the oil and gas industry, as instructors at universities or with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
^***Amelia Shevenell is an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida in the College of Marine Science. She has conducted paleoceanographic and paleoclimatologic research in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean since 1995. Her research interests include the Cenozoic evolution of Antarctica's ice sheets on million year to decadal timescales. She uses geochemical and foraminiferal paleoceanographic proxies from continental margin and deep-sea sediments to investigate the importance of ocean-ice interactions to ice sheet development. In 2006, she was awarded the GSA Storrs Cole Memorial Research Award for significant publications in invertebrate micropaleontology. She began working in the Australo-Antarctic Gulf in 2000, as a sedimentologist on Ocean Drilling Program Leg 189. She is actively involved as both a scientist and an advisory committee member in international scientific drilling initiatives, including the Integrated Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). She led the marine geology team for the 2014 expedition to the Sabrina Coast. Shevenell sailed as lead sedimentologist and was a co-proponent of IODP Expedition 374 to the Ross Sea.
^****Sean Gulick is a Research Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in marine geology and geophysics. He has sailed on over twenty-five research cruises and been chief or co-chief scientist on fourteen and authored or co-authored over 80 journal articles. He received the Jackson School Outstanding Researcher Award in 2014. His research includes tectonic and climate interactions in high-latitude systems such as the East Antarctic margin; geohazards and margin evolution of subduction and transform plate boundaries; and the geologic processes and environmental effects of the Cretaceous-Paleogene Chicxulub meteor impact. He led the seismic acquisition and processing team for the 2014 Nathaniel B. Palmer expedition to the Sabrina Coast.
^*****Amy Leventer is a Full Professor of geology at Colgate University. She has been working in Antarctica since 1983 and specializes in polar marine diatoms, but has also worked with planktonic foraminifera from the Gulf of Mexico. She received her BS in Aquatic Biology (1979) from Brown University, an MS in Marine Science (1981) from University of South Carolina and a PhD in Geology (1988) from Rice University. After finishing her graduate work, she spent several years at Byrd Polar Research Institute Ohio State University, followed by three years at the Limnological Research Center University of Minnesota, prior to her position at Colgate.