Geological Society President’s Award for Alice Paine
Dr. Alice R. Paine, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Environmental Sciences of the University of Basel, receives the 2026 President's Award from the Geological Society of London.
26 February 2026
Alice Paine is a postdoctoral researcher on the SNSF-funded project “Holocene hydroclimate, drought dynamics and environmental change recorded in multiple archives from SW Asia (MITRA)“. Led by Professor Dominik Fleitmann, the project aims to understand how the climate of southwest Asia has changed over the past 10,000 years, and what the main drivers of these changes are, using the geochemistry of stalagmites from caves across Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
More broadly, Alice's research integrates concepts from paleoclimatology, volcanology, oceanography, and geochemistry, among other disciplines, to better understand the causes of past shifts in the Earth’s climate. She also investigates how natural archives can be used to determine why these rapid shifts occurred and how they may be linked to the impacts of large, explosive volcanic eruptions.
The Geological Society of London President's Award is conferred upon early career geoscientists who show significant early promise and are judged to have the potential to be future leaders in their fields. These Awards were instituted in 1980 by Professor Perce Allen and are awarded annually at the discretion of the incumbent President. Alice will attend a formal presentation ceremony at Burlington House (London, UK) on 17 June 2026, as part of the Society’s annual President’s Day celebrations.