Kenneth WW Sims

Dr. Kenneth W.W. Sims is a professor at the University of Wyoming and a former tenured research scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He is the director of the University of Wyoming’s High Precision Isotope Laboratory and uses isotopic and chemical tracers to study geologic processes on Earth and other planetary bodies. He earned his BA, with honors, in geology from Colorado College (86); his MSc from the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico (90); and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (95). He has more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications focused on mantle melting, oceanic and continental crustal genesis, volcanology, groundwater hydrology, planetary core formation, climate change, carbon cycling, and chemical oceanography. He is Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers Solid Earth Geochemistry and Lead Editor for two AGU Monographs titled “Isotopic Constraints on Earth System Science Earth” and “Hydrothermal Processes in the Solar System.” Sims' field experience ranges from ocean-floor geology using manned and unmanned submersibles to geologic studies of active volcanoes at high altitudes in technical terrain. He is a ‘National Geographic Explorer’, a ‘Papadopoulos Fellow’, and a ‘Fulbright Scholar’. 

 

In addition to his academic career, Ken is an avid climber with extensive experience in technical, high-altitude, and cold-weather mountaineering in Antarctica, the Alaska Range, and the Andes of Peru. These technical climbing skills, developed in his youth, have enabled him to collect magma and gas samples from the craters of active volcanoes and unique lava sequences from vertical crater walls and high-altitude ridges on volcanoes worldwide. Using isotopic and geochemical data from these hard-to-get samples, Ken’s ultimate goal is to better understand the genesis and evolution of Earth’s volcanoes and to forecast future eruptions. Ken is the University of Wyoming’s Organizational Lead for the USGS Yellowstone Volcano Observatory Consortium, which monitors Yellowstone’s geologic hazards. 

 

Sims’ teaching centers on a relationship-based pedagogy that fosters a “slow-thinking” environment that promotes academic rigor, observational skills, and quantitative analysis. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate science courses at UW, including those offered once a year through UW’s Pathways from Prisons. He has received several faculty- and student-nominated teaching and research awards at Colorado College, the U. of CA, Berkeley, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Univ. of Wyoming.