Jessica Fitzsimmons

Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University

Dr. Jessica Fitzsimmons is a classically trained chemist who moved into chemical oceanography as a way to apply her chemical skills to further our understanding of the natural environment. She got her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Biology/Marine Science at Boston University in 2008 and then pursued graduate school in Chemical Oceanography at MIT in the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Joint Program, earning her PhD in 2013 with Dr. Ed Boyle.

Thereafter she was a postdoctoral scholar at both MIT and then at the Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University with Dr. Rob Sherrell. She has been a professor in the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M University since 2015.

Fitzsimmons’ research focuses on the biogeochemical cycling of trace metals. Her main analytical tool is multi-element concentration analyses of dissolved and particulate metals in seawater using ICP-MS, though she also has interests in metal speciation (especially the role and composition of colloidal metals) and the use of iron isotopes to understand metal cycling. While she has sailed all over the globe for over a year at sea – from the North Pole to Antarctica – her current research focuses on dissolved-particulate interactions in a variety of high-particle plumes: hydrothermal plumes in the deep sea, glacial meltwater plumes near Antarctica, and sediment plumes created by deep-sea mining activities.

Fitzsimmons is the U.S. Representative to the International GEOTRACES Scientific Steering Committee. She has participated in every single U.S. GEOTRACES cruise in some way, most recently as the Co-Chief Scientist of the U.S. GEOTRACES GP17-OCE section in the South Pacific and Southern Oceans.