This group often focuses on the physical and chemical properties of Earth materials, including minerals, rocks, magmas, and fluids. These properties help us to understand the different roles these materials play in important geologic processes.
To understand the material properties, we also investigate their atom scale chemical structures, meaning, how atoms are arranged and bonded to one another to define the material.
This line of research requires many methods of material science. Our group often relies on advanced facilities to investigate both the material properties and chemical structures. At the same time, we need to apply fundamental physics and chemistry to understand these characteristics and how they influence geologic processes.
Because we also focus on processes deep with the Earth and other planets, we have an additional challenge of creating the right pressure, temperature, and chemical conditions. This requires laboratory-based experiments and computer simulations.
For prospective students, you will enjoy this if:
1) you are drawn to the more fundamental physics and chemistry side of geology, or if you enjoy laboratory or computational work.
2) are looking for ways to better understand and fill gaps in the rock record. The controlled experiments and simulations help us to identify the controls on natural observations such as from geochemistry or geophysics.