Robert R. Gaines

His father was born in 1942 in Roanoke, Virginia.

His mother was born in 1945 in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

His father was teaching at Mississippi University for Women at the time.

Shortly after Gaines's sister Elizabeth was born, the family moved to Montgomery, Alabama.

Once in Montgomery, Gaines's father taught theatre history and acting at a satellite of Auburn University, eventually becoming head of the Theatre Department.

His mother taught journalism, public relations and mass communication at the same university.

Gaines and his sister both talked before they walked, growing up in an academic house that valued words and ideas.

Gaines first became interested in paleontology when he was in preschool, when his mom brought him a trilobite as a souvenir from a trip to Utah.

He announced to his preschool class on career day that he wanted to be a paleontologist.

His mother had a passion for Ancient Egypt, and Gaines considered a career in Archeology, participating in several digs in Alabama in his teenage years.

In high school, he participated in a dig at an Etruscan site in Italy.

Robert Riepma Gaines (born 1973) is an American geologist who teaches at Pomona College in Claremont, California.

Gaines was born in 1973 in Columbus, Mississippi, to Robert Anderson and Elizabeth Blair Gaines.

Thanks to his dad's passion for theater, he also tried his hand at acting, participating in productions in community theatre all the way up to a professional role at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in 1986.

Gaines and his wife now live with two cats, Floriano and Pascal.

Gaines attended The Montgomery Academy in Montgomery, Alabama, from grade school on and graduated in 1991.

Following in his parents’ footsteps he attended the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and received a Bachelor of Science in Geology in 1995.

While at William & Mary his love for fossils grew.

He testified before the Virginia State Legislature to help name Chesapecten Jeffersonius, an ancient scallop, the state fossil of Virginia.

He took a road trip with a faculty member to the House Range in Utah, where he found the source of his very first trilobite fossil that his mother had given him.

The House Range was to become one of his favorite places on earth, and he went on to do his PhD on Cambrian ecosystems there.

For a master's degree in geology, Gaines attended the University of Cincinnati.

He took a class with his future PhD advisor, Dr. Mary L. Droser, on sabbatical from UC Riverside, who further instilled his passion for fossils and ancient ecosystems.

After graduating with his masters in 1998, he decided to work with Droser at University of California, Riverside, in the department of Earth Sciences.

They were married in Malibu in 2002.

She is also a professor at Pomona in the geology department.

She researches marine biogeochemical cycles.

Similar to him, she is interested in the intersection of biology and geology, looking to identify and characterize the links between biologically driven fluxes and physical processes in the ocean.

In 2003 he completed his dissertation titled: "Dissecting a Cambrian Lagerstätte: Insights from the Wheeler Formation, Utah."

During his first year at University of Cincinnati Gaines met his wife, Maria Prokopenko.

Gaines arrived at Pomona College in 2003 as a visiting professor and was hired on the tenure-track only a year later.

He was tenured in 2009.

He is the Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology, teaching core courses such as Sedimentology and Earth History, while also offering introductory courses or electives on topics such as Carbonates, Climate Change, and Paleontology.

He was twice awarded the Pomona College Wig Award for Teaching.

He ensures that his students are engaged with research, from bringing students along to his field camp in British Columbia, to turning class field trips into sample collection opportunities.

He received multiple grants from government and private agencies for substantial expansion of the analytical facilities of the college and Geology Department.

Working in collaboration with Pomona College professors David M. Tanenbaum, Mark Los Huertos and Jade Star Lackey, they established the David W. and Claire B. Oxtoby Environmental Isotope Lab and purchased an ICP-MS, IRMS, SEM, XRF spectrometer, and XRD.

He was an active member of the community beyond the Geology department, serving on multiple committees such as the strategic planning steering committee, research committee, faculty position advisory committee and faculty executive committee.

From July 2019 to June 2022, he served as the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the college.

He is known for his research on fossils in Burgess Shale-type deposits, having been a member of two teams that made two of the most important fossil discoveries in recent decades, one in Kootenay National Park in British Columbia, Canada and the other in the Yangtze Gorges area in South China.