Dr. Pete van Hengstum
Associate Vice President for Research & Graduate Studies, Texas A&M University at Galveston
Associate Dean, College of Marine Sciences & Maritime Studies, Texas A&M University
Professor
vanhenp@tamug.edu
(409) 740-4919
Dr. Peter J. van Hengstum is currently a Professor of Marine and Coastal Environmental Sciences at Texas A&M University at Galveston, with a joint appointment in the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M University. While serving Texas A&M University at Galveston since 2013, he became the Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies at Texas A&M University at Galveston and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Marine Sciences and Maritime Studies in 2024. His research explores how Earth's oceans, climate, and coastal environments have changed over thousands of years, and how those changes have influenced ecosystems and human societies across the wider Caribbean and tropical Atlantic.
Drawing on geology, oceanography, ecology, and micropaleontology, his laboratory reconstructs environmental histories preserved in the sediments of lakes, sinkholes, blue holes, and submerged cave systems. Since pioneering new field methods in 2011 that enabled the recovery of long sediment records from these environments, his research has revealed new long-term records of hurricanes, rainfall, sea-level change, groundwater dynamics, and ecosystem evolution. These results provide a long-term perspective needed to better understand modern environmental change.
Dr. van Hengstum has conducted field research throughout the Americas and internationally, including the Bahamas, Bermuda, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, and Micronesia, and has participated in expeditions aboard internationally recognized research vessels, including the R/V Atlantis, M/V Odyssey (formerly Alucia), and R/V Western Flyer. His career has been supported by over $6 million in external funding from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, and other national and international funding agencies.
Over the course of his career, Dr. van Hengstum has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications, including articles in Nature Communications, Communications Earth & Environment, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Scientific Reports, Geophysical Research Letters, and Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology. His discoveries have been featured in documentaries including NOVA and Years of Living Dangerously. He was named a National Geographic Explorer in 2018, a Texas A&M University Chancellor's EDGES Fellow in 2021, he received the Geological Society of America's W. Storrs Cole Memorial Research Award in Invertebrate Micropaleontology in 2022, and he was honored with the William Paul Ricker Distinguished Faculty Award from Texas A&M University at Galveston in 2018.
Beyond research, Dr. van Hengstum is committed to mentoring the next generation of scientists and strengthening teaching and research at Texas A&M University at Galveston. He led the redesign of the university's first-year Earth and Ocean Science curriculum in 2020, creating a modern introductory experience for hundreds of students each year. His students and postdoctoral scholars have gone on to careers in academia, government, and research institutions, and his teaching has been recognized with the Texas A&M University Center for Teaching Excellence Montague Scholar Award for excellence in undergraduate education.