Hi, I’m Kemi! I’m a 4th-year PhD candidate in the Sperling Historical Geobiology and Payne Paleobiology Labs in the Earth & Planetary Sciences department at Stanford University. I’m interested in how mass extinctions affect different types of animals, and more broadly how animals respond to their environments in general.

research

Half of my work involves experiments to better understand the differential responses of bivalves and brachiopods to temperature-dependent hypoxia and to euxinia in settings that mimic those at the end-Permian mass extinction. (I recently got the chance to talk a bit about the euxinia study on NPR’s Short Wave podcast, during which I also touched on some of Dr. Andy Marquez’s incredible physiology work studying the differing temperature sensitivities and hypoxia tolerances of Paleozoic vs modern fauna. You can reach him at jamarquez@stanford.edu.)

The other half of my work uses the metabolic index developed by Deutsch et al. 2015 and Penn et al., 2018 to explore early animal evolution and modern ecophysiology.

Previously, I’ve worked on or helped out with research projects investigating archaeal metabolism at cold methane seeps, the origin of life, and deer mouse adaptation (please see my CV below for further details). I continue to be very interested in astrobiology.

teaching & mentorship

I’m passionate about doing my part to make science more accessible and inclusive. I assist with outreach initiatives as part of Black Oceans Stanford Scholars and the Stanford Black Bioscience Organization, and serve as a mentor in the Biology Preview Program and Graduate Student Action Committee mentorship program. This past summer, I mentored two fantastic undergrads, Dax Serrato (UC San Diego) and Creek Arthur (Hanover College) during Stanford’s Sustainability Undergraduate Research in Geoscience and Engineering Program.

I’ve TA’d a mix of undergraduate- and graduate-level courses at Stanford including The Sixth Extinction (and the Other Five), Fundamentals of Geobiology, and Introduction to Geology. This coming winter, I’ll be teaching a new multidisciplinary course I designed called Out of this World: The Science of Science Fiction (EPS 118/218).

publications

1. Ashing-Giwa K, Payne, JL, Sperling, EA; Investigating the response of Glycymeris septentrionalis (Bivalvia) and Terebratalia transversa (Brachiopoda) to euxinia: Implications for mass extinctions. Geology 2025; doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/G53911.1.
2. Keller K, Kopf S, McFarlin J, Maloney A, Rhim J, Elling F, Ashing-Giwa K, Baker I, Calhoun A, Pearson A. (2025). Compound-specific carbon and hydrogen isotope analysis traces archaeal lipid signatures in cold seep marine systems. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2025.08.017.
3. Keller K, Baum MM, Liu XL, Ashing-Giwa K, Baker IR, Blewett J, Pearson, A. (2024). Constraining the sources of archaeal tetraether lipids in multiple cold seep provinces of the Cascadia Margin. Organic Geochemistry, 104882–104882. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orggeochem.2024.104882.
4. Sedrak MS, Salgia MM, Decat Bergerot C, Ashing-Giwa K… Pal S., Bergerot PG. Examining Public Communication About Kidney Cancer on Twitter. (2019) JCO Clin Cancer Inform., 3:1-6. https://doi.org/10.1200/CCI.18.00088.

cv