Biography
Matthew Powell joined the Juniata College faculty in 2007 as an assistant professor of geology. Previously, he worked as a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany from 2006 to 2007.
Powell earned a bachelor?s degree in biology in 1998 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va. and went on to earn a master?s degree at Virginia Tech in geological sciences in 2000. He earned a doctoral degree in earth and planetary sciences in 2005 from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.
Before pursuing graduate studies, Powell worked as a research assistant in 1998 at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine. From 2005 to 2006, he was a visiting assistant professor of geology at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.
He has taught a variety of courses, including general geology, history and evolution of the earth and oceanography. He has taught graduate lab courses in earth systems history, paleontology and historical geology. As a research, Powell is interested in looking at the invertebrate fossil record to see biogeographic patterns of evolution. His specific area of expertise centers on the effects the late Paleozoic Ice Age had on the ecology and evolution of brachiopods.
He has had his research published in a variety of professional journals, including Global Ecology and Biogeography, Geology, and Paeleobiology.
He is a member of a number of professional organizations, including the Geological Society of America, the Paleontological Society, the International Biogeography Society and the American Geophysical Union.