Martha Cary Eppes, Ph.D.

Martha Cary (Missy) Eppes, Ph.D. is a professor of Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she has worked since 2003. She holds BS and MS degrees in Geology, with theses focused on soils and geomorphology, and a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from the University of New Mexico – where she researched the influence of soil development and weathering on the response of landscapes to tectonic perturbations and faulting.
Her current research interests include mechanical weathering processes, soil geomorphology and Quaternary geology of post-glacial landscapes, and soil geomorphology of the piedmont of the eastern United States. Since 2009, she has been the recipient of $1.49 million in external grants from sources including NSF and NASA; $975,339 were awarded as Lead-PI and $515,296 as Co-PI. She has served as first author of impactful articles in prestigious Nature Communications, Geology, Geophysical Research Letters, Reviews of Geophysics, and GSA Bulletin.
Her most recent body of published work has focused on mechanical weathering processes and the insight that fracture mechanics concepts can provide to the understanding of natural rock fracture. Eppes and Keanini (2017) recognized and quantified for the first time a previously unrecognized role of climate in subcritical rock fracture in the context of Earth surface processes; Eppes et al., 2020 verified that study’s theoretical models with field data. For this work, Eppes was recipient of the 2020 Geological Society of America (GSA) Kirk Bryan Award for Research Excellence – GSA’s highest honor in her discipline.  Eppes became an elected Fellow of GSA in 2018 and leader of the Quaternary Geology & Geomorphology Division of GSA from 2018-2021, culminating in Division Chair. She has been research advisor to 3 PhD students, 20 MS students and ~106 undergraduate students (2004-present) – and published 16 papers with student co-authors since 2010.
In 2022, Eppes was the head co-leader of an international, interdisciplinary conference (PRF2022 Progressive Failure of Brittle Rocks) bringing together the fields of surface processes and rock mechanics.   In 2022-2023 she served in highly prestigious positions as a Fulbright Research Scholar and a University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study Fellow. For “groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research linking rock fracture mechanics and surface processes, and building new bridges between communities," Eppes was chosen to receive the 2022 AGU Earth and Planetary Surface Processes Group’s Marguerite T. Williams Award.