Marine Paleontologist · Data Scientist
Hi. I'm
The ocean's past is a warning we haven't finished reading.
Earth's oceans have faced catastrophe before. I'm a quantitative paleobiologist tracking how environmental change reshapes ocean life and biodiversity across space and time. My work is inherently interdisciplinary: I blend physiology, geology, oceanography, and data science to understand the tipping points between extinction and endurance.
To my knowledge, I am the first female Saudi paleontologist. One of my goals is student outreach within paleontology, so that everyone feels like they belong!
I also draw digitally and with charcoal, and I'm writing a high fantasy novel woven through with biology and geology. I build fantasy worlds out of the same material I study: deep time, ocean life, and what survives!
Postdoctoral Fellow
Virginia Tech · Dr. Pedro Monarrez Lab
I study how ocean life survives Earth's worst catastrophes in deep time. I aim to understand what traits tip the balance between extinction and endurance by using physiology, ocean conditions, and evolutionary history to explain who survives global crises and how.
For my postdoc, I use statistical modeling alongside Late Pleistocene and Holocene fossils to reconstruct what ocean communities looked like before humans started degrading them by building a data-driven baseline for understanding extinction drivers.
Many marine ecosystems were already unrecognizable by the time modern ecology arrived to study them. The fossil record is how we recover that baseline.
Virginia Tech · Dr. Pedro Monarrez's Lab. Coral reefs, metabolic index, invasive species, and quantitative ecology.
Stanford University · Dr. Jonathan Payne. Linking biogeographic patterns in deep time to extinction, physiology, and climate change.
Cornell University · Dr. Terry Jordan. Stratigraphy, petrophysics & geothermal systems.
George Mason University · Dr. Linda Hinnov. Geodesy and Earth tides.
You can't measure what we're losing without knowing what was there before. The fossil record is that baseline.
Answering deep-time questions requires pulling from biology, geology, oceanography, and computational science, all at once.
I use biogeographic similarity measures like Jaccard and construct equal-area hexagonal grids to track how global marine community composition has changed through time. Combined with large fossil occurrence databases, this lets me pull community-level and biogeographic signals from deep time and turn them into statistically tractable narratives about survival, diversity, and collapse.
Fusing paleontology with marine biology, physical oceanography (oxygen, temperature, pH proxies), and ecology. My dissertation linked biogeographic patterns to extinction physiology, extinction and climate change; my postdoc extends this to invasive species and metabolic index modeling in the past ~125k years to the present.
Reading rock sequences in the field to reconstruct ancient environments, collecting specimens, and systematically identifying fossils to build the primary datasets that everything else depends on. The numbers only mean something if you know what you're counting.
Translating high-dimensional paleontological datasets into accessible visual narratives for scientific publication, public outreach, and policy-relevant storytelling. Fluent in R, Quarto, learning Python, and custom web-based visualization.
© Jood Al Aswad — graphical abstract for Payne et al. 2023 A graphical abstract I drew for Payne et al. 2023
Examining the history of marine invertebrate life to determine the contributions of climate change and extinction to community compositional similarity. Now in review at Proceedings B.
My paper in Science Advances
After the largest mass extinction in Earth's history, marine ecosystems became strikingly similar worldwide, what we called "The Great Dulling" in Stanford Magazine. Organisms that could tolerate warmer, lower-oxygen oceans expanded globally.
I also spent a field season in Saudi Arabia collecting and then systematically identifying bivalve fossils from directly after the extinction event.
Read in Science Advances Read in Discover Magazine Read about my field work in al-Riyadh Newspaper
© The Ocean Agency/ Ocean Image Bank
Current projects shift to conservation paleobiology, where I utilize my interdisciplinary tools in palebiology, physiology, and oceanography to quantify how oceanic changes have been, and continue to be, reefs and impacting benthic marine communities.
© Richard Vevers / Ocean Image Bank
By examining data at multiple temporal and spatial scales, I aim to understand how the traits that helped organisms survive past environmental change will help them survive future ones.
Al Aswad, J., Bazzi, M., Penn, J., Monarrez, P.M., Deutsch, C., and Payne, J. — Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Testing every geologic age across the Phanerozoic: only the coupling of intense climate change and biodiversity loss consistently produces global homogenization.
Al Aswad, J., Hautmann, M., Singh, P., Ferrill, N.L., Al-Ramadan, K., Lehrmann, D.J., Morsilli, M.D., Koeshidayatullah, A.I., Payne, J.L.
Al Aswad, J., Penn, J., Bazzi, M., Monarrez, P.M., Deutsch, C., and Payne, J. — Science Advances, March 2025
Physiological tolerances to temperature and oxygen explain why end-Permian survivors expanded globally, driving "The Great Dulling."
Bazzi, M., Lloyd, W.L., Ebersole, J., Sternes, P., Al Aswad, J., and Payne, J. — Science Advances, October 2025
DOI →Payne, J.L., Al Aswad, J., Deutsch, C., Monarrez, P.M., Penn, J.L., and Singh, P. — Cambridge Prisms: Extinction
DOI →Tester, J., Beyers, S., Gustafson, J.O., Jordan, T.E., Smith, J.D., Al Aswad, J.A. et al. — World Geothermal Congress 2020; GRC Transactions 2018
So far, I've taught university level classes that encompass a wide range of students from freshmen majoring in humanities to PhD students in paleobiology; community college classes in physical geography and climate change; undergraduate-level introductory courses in paleobiology; and more!
My teaching philosophy is all about creating engaging, student-centered learning experiences, and it fills me with great joy to help teach and mentor future generations of scientists from all backgrounds about the oceans, the history of life, and the world around them while giving them applicable skills to tackle this rapidly changing world.
I've had the chance to teach and assist in courses on the coevolution of life and Earth, paleobiology, macroevolution, climate change, and mass extinctions, and have prepared for courses in oceanography, marine ecology, geology, and biogeography.
EPS 169/269 at Stanford, with Dr. Jonathan Payne. Head TA across Autumn 2024, Winter 2023, and Spring 2023. Assisted in creating the class on mass extinctions — designed the syllabus, built activities, and prepared and taught multiple lectures.
EPS 136/236 at Stanford. Teaching Assistant supporting students in the study of evolutionary patterns across deep time.
GEOLSCI 4 at Stanford. Teaching Assistant exploring how life and the planet have shaped one another through geologic time.
Foothill College. Guest lecturer for Week 7: Climate Change — taught a lecture and activities that included a paper-chain of 460 circles representing the age of the Earth, climograph exercises, and a Book Club discussion.
Friday Harbor Laboratories at the University of Washington. Taught a module introducing the field of paleobiology to a range of undergraduate and graduate students, incorporating active participation via TopHat.
Mentored Victor Trujillo and Lucy Helms through the Stanford SURGE program, and concurrently assisted in mentoring Edward Huang (Bio-X) and Kelly Tung, McKenna Sanders, and Sakeena Saber (Stanford Earth Young Investigators high school internship).
Stanford Centennial Teaching Assistant Award · 2025
Teaching these topics has been incredibly rewarding, and in 2025 I was honored to receive Stanford's Centennial Teaching Assistant Award for my work in these classes.
Here's an example of a game I created, using publicly available resources, for the Sixth Mass Extinction (and the Other Five) class which explore the modern and past biodiversity crises. In this game, students vote on a variety of choices based on things they learned in class to help their creature survive the end-Permian mass extinction. Contact me for more information about this game!
Rules: Get at least 500 points to survive the end-Permian mass extinction. Vote on Polleverywhere. For each question, the answer with the highest submissions will be chosen.
One of my goals is student outreach within paleontology, so that everyone feels like they belong.
As the first female Saudi paleontologist, I am committed to broadening who feels welcome in the geosciences — through mentorship, public writing, and being visible where I wasn't expected to be.
For 3-4 years of my Ph.D. career, I happily volunteered in multiple positions with the Paleontological Society. I have a particular interest in making our field more welcoming to everyone, particularly if they are students or just starting out in their careers. With the help of my peers and friends at the Paleontological Society, I was able to create the DEEP awards, which award students and early career members for their efforts in enhancing the experiences of people who engage in paleontology and making paleontological information easier to access. The award grants them honoraria, plaques and memberships to the Society and making it a welcoming field. We honored them in a DEEP Awards celebration that had a fantastic turnout (more than 100 attendees out of an expected 70), which truly displayed how much the Society cares about these initiatives.
Stanford's SURGE program aims to support the undergraduate experience of students across the United States by recruiting bright, talented undergraduates who might not otherwise have the opportunity to conduct research. In 2022, I had the pleasure of mentoring two undergraduate students, and helped with mentoring a BioX intern and 4 high school interns at the Payne lab!
Stanford Centennial Teaching Assistant Award (2025). Association of Women Geoscientsits & PaleoSociety Winifred Goldring Award for Excellence in Paleontology PhD work(2025).
At Virginia Tech I am co-creating a Pokémon-inspired evolution event with students and the Cosplay For Science creators, which will take place at the Virginia Tech Museum of Geosciences. I'll be drawing all the designs and logos, and create a marine-themed station to teach kids and interested community members in Virginia about the tropic pyramid and animal abudance while dressed as a Gym leader!
I draw digitally and with charcoal! I like to live-sketchtalks, make portraits in Procreate, and produce science illustrations. My team won top video for best storytelling at Stanford's BioX 2020. And, my creative magnum opus is a high fantasy novel I'm writing, woven through with biology and geology elements and a blend of my own culture.
Whether you're a hiring committee, a prospective collaborator, a student, or simply someone who cares about reefs, I'd love to hear from you!
