Jennifer Smith

Jennifer R. Smith, PhD, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of eight U.S. citizens selected to go abroad in 2013 as an Eisenhower USA Fellow. Retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of Eisenhower Fellowships, announced the eight fellowship winners, who were selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants. As part of her fellowship, Smith will spend a month in India next summer on an intensive individualized professional program.

As one of the “generic geologists” on a dig called the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Jennifer Smith, PhD, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, was asked to sample the alum from ancient mines and to determine whether it could be the source of the blue in the “blue painted pottery” found at sites dating from the New Kingdom.

WUSTL geoarcheologist Jennifer Smith, Ph.D., is featured a History channel documentary that solves a series of geological mysteries about the Sahara’s past. The show, part of the “How the Earth Was Made” series, explains why there are marine fossils embedded in the blocks of stone from which the pyramids are made and drawings of people swimming are scratched into the walls of desert caves.