Ryan Manzuk is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Program on Science and Global Security. Prior to joining SGS, he received his PhD in 2024 from the Princeton University Department of Geosciences. While sedimentary geology was the main focus of Ryan’s doctoral thesis, his graduate research also included applications of novel remote sensing techniques for conflict understanding, conducted in partnership with SITU Studio in Brooklyn, NY. Ryan holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago, and spent two years following graduation as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guinea, West Africa, working on sustainable and climate-adaptive agricultural solutions.
Research Interests
Ryan’s central focus is using scientific investigative techniques, often including computational image analysis, to tell data-driven stories about critical events. Trained as a geologist, he developed this approach to delve into Earth’s first animal-built reefs and discover the influence these environments had on the evolution of early animals over 500 million years ago. Ryan now works to apply these methods, combined with his background in Earth sciences, to more modern issues. He is involved in remote sensing efforts to provide broad historical and spatial perspectives on human rights violations and in areas of conflict. Ryan’s current research with SGS investigates the degree to which safeguards against the mining of Uranium are being upheld. This work also is concerned with communities near Uranium-rich ores, constraining health and environmental consequences if and when these deposits are mined.
Publications
B. Howes, A. Mehra, J. Wilcots, E. Geyman, R. Manzuk, C. Deutsch, and A. Maloof, The where, when, and how of ooid formation: What ooids tell us about ancient seawater chemistry, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2024.
I. Panigrah, R. Manzuk, A. Maloof, and R. Fong, Improving data-efficient fossil segmentation via model editing, CVPR Workshop on Learning with Limited Labeled Data for Image and Video Understanding (L3D-IVU), 2023.
R. Manzuk, A. Maloof, J. Kaandorp, and M. Webster, Branching archaeocyaths as ecosystem engineers during the Cambrian radiation, Geobiology, 2023.
R. Manzuk, D. Singh, A. Mehra, E. Geyman, S. Edmonsond, and A. Maloof, A high-resolution, multispectral macro-imager for geology and paleontology, GSA Today, 2022.
A. Mehra, B. Howes, R. Manzuk, A. Spatzier, B. Samuels, and A. Maloof, A novel technique for producing three-dimensional data using serial sectioning and semi-automatic image classification, Microscopy and Microanalysis, 2022.