While Binghamton University is long miles from the ocean, marine research plays a major role in its Earth Sciences Department, where researchers are probing the Earth's deep past for insight into its climate change future.
Three of the program's current graduate students have participated or will participate in expeditions with the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) or its successor organization, the International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP³), as well as an undergraduate student and a trio of faculty members: Assistant Professor Adriane Lam, Associate Professor Molly Patterson and Professor Howard Richard Naslund.
"IODP has totally changed my career. I have a huge network of collaborators and colleagues now in multiple subgroups within geology and the Earth sciences," said Lam, who has sailed as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher and as an assistant professor. "In a lot of ways, the experience made my career."
Participants end up co-authoring papers, sometimes in previously unfamiliar subjects, and forge lasting connections with researchers all over the globe.
But like the shifting climate that researchers study, that experience is changing. Previous research was conducted on the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES) Resolution, a specialized ship capable of drilling 2 kilometers into seafloor sediment. After nearly 40 years as a research vessel, the Resolution was retired from service after its final expedition in 2024, which Lam was a part of, and no new deep-drilling ship has been launched.
But international research continues under the auspices of IODP³, which uses mission-specific platforms that can be installed on a boat. While the JOIDES typically accommodated more than two dozen scientists during expeditions, the drill crews will now work alongside a very limited science party; instead, the entire science party will gather onshore at the University of Bremen's Center for Marine Environmental Sciences in Germany, home to the Bremen Core Repository.
IODP³ launched its first mission this year, to take a closer look at freshwater stored beneath the ocean floor off the coast of New England. Drilling operations using the Liftboat Robert will run from May to August, followed by the gathering of the 41-member science team in January 2026 in Bremen. Binghamton doctoral student Gretl King is part of the team, which has members from 13 nations.
King will have a different experience than fellow doctoral candidates Ravi Kiran Koorapati and Halima Ibrahim and undergraduate Michael Kashinsky, all of whom sailed on the Resolution during its final missions.
Ship-based missions lasted two months; the land-based mission will last for only one, since the cores will already be drilled and available. Still, King will receive the same intensive training that scientists received on previous missions and will have the opportunity to work alongside people from around the world - without the pitching decks, seasickness and bland shipboard fare.
As a member of the expedition's biostratigraphy team, King's job is to date the cores based on the tiny fossils they contain. Her own research builds off Lam and Patterson's prior work reconstructing the evolution of plankton in conjunction with atmospheric and climate changes.
"The goal is reconstructing the beginning of the Gulf Stream and see if we can watch the marine planktic community evolve in response," King explained.
The shipboard experience
When it comes to marine science, there's nothing quite like being on a ship. Working closely together without any distractions, shipmates become "science family," Lam said.
Rainbows arcing through the clouds. The haunting sound of ocean waves. A baby blue whale. Arctic puffins in flight. Sunsets, sunrises and a mysterious phenomenon known as the green flash, when the rising or setting sun appears to give off a quick burst of green rays.
"We used to gather every day during sunset, trying to watch for the green flash," said Koorapati, whose expedition took him to the Mediterranean Sea's Tyrrhenian Basin. "Everybody would be like, 'We saw it!' or 'We didn't see it,' and have friendly arguments."
Outside of science and sunset-watching, the team entertained themselves with treasure hunts, movie nights and dance parties. The conference table was frequently used for Ping Pong - a particularly fun game when the ship rocked in the waves, if you don't mind the nausea.
And that nausea can be considerable. Ibrahim suffered daily bouts of seasickness, she remembered. Her expedition took her to the turbulent northern Atlantic Ocean, where the boat pitched on the chilly swells.
"There were times when the sea was very rough and everything was moving. The whole world was turning and spinning around me," she remembered. "But the science was good."
The data obtained through the Resolution's drilling expeditions is still fueling research at Binghamton and shaping our understanding of global climate change. But the loss of the drill ship is a blow to the scientific community in terms of both equipment and expertise, Lam admitted. The mission-specific platforms can't drill as far or recover the deep ocean sediments that are critical to understanding climate change in the distant past.
However, going to sea - whether in person or virtually, as with the new expeditions - remains an invaluable experience for researchers. They have the opportunity to work alongside scientists using the same samples and data to answer very different questions than those they tackle in the lab back home, Ibrahim reflected.
The experience also builds confidence, and not just in the sciences.
"During my first expedition, I cried before I got on the ship. I was like, 'What am I doing?'" Lam remembered. "By the time I got off the ship, I was not the same person. I realized that I can do this."
"I really want my students to participate in these expeditions because they will get training in a way that I could never train them, and they will see things that I could never show them," she added. "The confidence they build so quickly in one to two months would otherwise take years."
