Boyle is a marine geochemist involved in the study of the evolution of the earth's climate and the oceanic dispersal of elements such as iron and lead by natural and anthropogenic dispersion into the atmosphere.

Boyle was one of the pioneers in the development trace element analysis of seawater and in the development of several new proxy tracers for paleoenvironmental processes. He was the first to provide a quantitative assessment of chemical changes in the deep ocean during ice ages. He demonstrated that the deep ocean responded rapidly to abrupt changes in the surface climate. He is using the fallout of industrial lead emissions to document mechanisms of trace metal transport through the atmosphere into remote polar ice sheets, and has reconstructed a record of industrial lead and emissions into the western North Atlantic Ocean for the past 220 years. He has also worked on the key nano-nutrient iron in the ocean.

He served as an editor of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters for six years, and has been an associate editor for Paleoceanography and Marine Chemistry. He has been a member of the external advisory board of IFM-GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany, for more than 10 years. He currently is serving on the U.S. National Steering Committee of the GEOTRACES program. He has been named a fellow of the AAAS, AGU and European Union of Geosciences. He was named a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2008.

Tim Grove has been a professor of geology at MIT since July 1979.

His major interest is in understanding the chemical differentiation processes that have led to the formation of the crust and mantle of the Earth, Moon, Mars and meteorite parent bodies. He and his students do high-pressure, high-temperature melting experiments on planetary materials to place constraints on the thermal history, processes and deep structure in planetary interiors.

Herring received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geodetic science from the University of Queensland in Australia. His PhD in geophysics is from MIT. Herring joined the MIT faculty in 1989 after working as a research scientist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics for six years.

He has been awarded the Macelwane Medal by the American Geophysical Union, the Bomford  Prize by the International Association of Geodesy and the Vening-Meinesz Medal by the European Geophysical Union.

Lodovica Illari is a meteorologist, who teaches large-scale dynamics and synoptic meteorology to graduate and undergraduate students. She is responsible for the Synoptic Laboratory. Her research interests are in synoptic meterology, severe weather and atmospheric blocking. She is also involved in developing innovative teaching methods and outreach to the public and schools – see the Weather in a Tank project.

Alison Malcolm is an assistant professor of geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. She is an active participant in MIT's Earth Resources Laboratory and has research interests in both geophysics and mathematics.

Noelle Eckley Selin is assistant professor of engineering systems, with a joint appointment as assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. She is also affiliated with the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

Her research uses atmospheric chemistry modeling to inform decision-making strategies on air pollution, climate change and mercury pollution. She has also published articles and book chapters on the interactions between science and policy in international environmental negotiations, in particular focusing on global efforts to regulate hazardous chemicals and persistent organic pollutants. Prior to joining the MIT faculty, Selin was a postdoctoral associate and research scientist with the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

She received her PhD from Harvard University in Earth and Planetary Sciences, in the Atmospheric Chemistry Modeling Group, where she developed and evaluated a global, 3-D atmospheric model of mercury pollution. Prior to starting her PhD program, she was a research associate with the Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She also was a visiting Fulbright fellow at the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, Denmark (2000 to 2001), and prior to that worked on chemicals issues at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She has a BA in Environmental Science and Public Policy and an MA in Earth and Planetary Sciences, both from Harvard.