Gabriel Bowen – a former University of Utah postdoctoral researcher who returned July 1, 2012 as a faculty member – has won a prestigious award from the American Geophysical Union. The group awarded a James B. Macelwane Medal to Bowen, an associate professor of geology and geophysics.

The medal is given annually to three to five people “for significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by an outstanding early career scientist.” Bowen was among three winners this year. The medal is named after a Saint Louis University seismologist who helped establish the science on a firm theoretical basis in the 1930s.

Bowen, who earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan and his doctorate at University of California, Santa Cruz, was a postdoctoral research associate in biology at the University of Utah during 2004-2005. Since 2006, he was on the faculty of Purdue University before returning to Utah. Bowen studies stable isotopes – isotopes of elements that do not decay radioactively – to study the connections between the water cycle, the carbon cycle and ecology and evolution.