He explores how plants can be used to reconstruct ancient environments, and the paleo-physiological underpinnings behind these plant-environment relationships. Current areas of interest include the reconstruction of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from the stomatal distributions in plant leaves, and the development of mechanistically-grounded proxies for climate and leaf ecology from the size and shape of fossil leaves. He also compiles Phanerozoic carbon dioxide records and investigates the strength of carbon dioxide-temperature coupling over multi-million-year timescales. In 2010, Dana was awarded the Donath Young Scientist Award from the Geological Society of America. Dr Roderik van de Wal, Utrecht University, The Netherlands