Peter Huybers. Courtesy the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has named 24 new MacArthur Fellows for 2009. Peter Huybers, a climate scientist at Harvard University and NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship alumnus, is one of twenty-four innovators in art, science, writing and more who will receive a fellowship award of $500,000 to support their creative work over the next five years.

Since 2007, Huybers has been an Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. He has developed several theories for explaining global climate change on various time scales. Much of his research focuses on the Pleistocene, the epoch that spans from about 1.8 million years ago to the end of the most recent ice age, some 12,000 years ago. Huybers’ research showed that the long-recognized period of glacier formation could be explained mainly by changes in the angle of the Earth's axis

Huybers has applied his findings to recent conditions, and sought to explain changes in land ice on the scale of years or decades. The MacArthur Foundations says, "Through his imaginative yet simple interpretations of fundamental questions in climatology, geology, and oceanography, Huybers is advancing our understanding of both past and ongoing climate change."

Peter Huybers received a B.S. (1996) from the United States Military Academy at West Point. His subsequent military career included the training and leading of a tank platoon as part of peace-keeping operations in Bosnia. He went on to receive a Ph.D. (2004) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

From 2004-2006, Huybers completed a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The purpose of the NOAA Fellowship Program is to create the next generation of climate researchers by pairing recently graduated post-doctorates with host scientists at U.S. institutions to work in an area of mutual interest. The NOAA Climate Program Office funds this fellowship program.

Read more about Huybers and the 23 other MacArthur Fellows here.

The bios of the current 2009 class of NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellows’ bios are available here.