News from the Miranda Research Group

October 2023: Dr. Miranda is awarded the GSA Structural Geology and Tectonics Division 'Outstanding Publication Award' for her article 'Textural evidence for the transition from disclocation creep to dislocation-accommodated grain boundary sliding (DisGBS) in naturally-deformed plagioclase', published in the Journal of Structural Geology. This paper features some of the very first EBSD data to come out of Dr. Miranda's SEM Lab at CSUN. She is the first Latina lead author to ever receive this award, and only the 7th female lead author to win the award. She will accept the award at the SGT Division meeting at the GSA Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA.

September 2023: Dr. Miranda and new MS graduate student Anya Castro Mendez attend the Statewide California Earthquake Center (SCEC) conference in Palm Springs, CA. This is Anya's first scientific conference! 

August 2023: Dr. Miranda and Dr. Schwartz head to the Penrose Conference entitled "Developing a New Paradigm for the Mid-Cretaceous to Eocene North American Cordillera: An Obliquely Convergent Plate Margin" to present their research that was featured in Nature Communications. In other news, new MS student Anya Castro Mendez joins our research group - welcome!

June 2023: Miranda and CSUN/Univ. of Vermont co-authors publish a Nature Communications article entitled "Magmatic surge requires two-stage model for the Laramide Orogeny".

May 2023: Dr. Miranda is invited to be a panelist for the Earth Science Women's Network webinar called 'Navigating a Workplace Hierarchy'.

April 2023: Miranda and MS student Virginia Brown co-author a Geology paper entitled "Making sense of shear zone fabrics that record multiple episodes of deformation: EBSD and CVA-enhanced petrochronology.

March 2023: Dr. Miranda hosts an EBSD and MTEX Post-Processing Workshop at CSUN for 15 graduate students and faculty from Southwest U.S. regional Hispanic Serving Institutions (UNLV, Cal State Fullerton, Texas Tech Univ.). In this workshop, we toured the SEM lab, learned fundamentals of EBSD, and learned how to create MTEX scripts to process EBSD data.

February 2023: Dr. Miranda and Dr. Laurent Montesi (Univ. Maryland) co-led a Rheology Workshop and Field Trip for the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) as part of the Community Rheology Model working group's research. We got snowed on. In SoCal. Really.

January 2023: The new NSF MRI-funded TESCAN MIRA 4 and all its detector systems are fully installed and operational. Let the data collection begin! But first, we gotta learn how to use it...

November 2022: Dr. Miranda is invited to be a panelist for a AAPG Women's Network Webinar entitled Perceptions of DEI in Academic and Industry Careers.

July 2022: MS student Virginia Brown successfully defends her thesis in an outstanding presentation! Congrats!

June 2022: Dr. Miranda is invited to be a speaker at the Structural Geology and Tectonics Forum at Bowdoin College, Maine. 

March 2022: MS students Virginia Brown and Matthew Dietel make outstanding presentations at the GSA Cordilleran Section Meeting in Las Vegas, NV.

October 2021: Dr. Miranda co-convenes a session at GSA entitled 'Building the Workforce of the 21st Century: Understanding Diversity, Intersectionality, Ethics, and Inclusivity in the Geosciences and Implementing Transformative Change in Our Culture' with co-proponents Aradhna Tripati (UCLA), Gabriela Mora-Klepeis (Univ. Vermont), and Catherine Flowers (2020 MacArthur Grant Fellow; Equal Justice Initiative).

September 2021: Big SEM lab news! Dr. Miranda is awarded a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant for a new field emission gun SEM with state-of-the-art EDS and EBSD detector systesm. This is the largest NSF MRI grant ever awarded to a PI at CSUN. The TESCAN MIRA 4 FE-SEM will have new Oxford Instruments EDS and EBSD detectors, and will be open for analysis sometime in 2022. The CSUN SEM Lab will now have two SEMs dedicated to analysis of geological samples.

August 2021: Dr. Miranda publishes an article called 'The Leaky Pipeline Playbook' in Inside Higher Ed. In this article, I highlight the actions and behavior of gatekeepes who hold the power to make or break careers and perpetuate the disenfranchisement of women and people of color in academia.

July 2021: MS student Matthew Dietel successfully defends his thesis in an outstanding presentation! Congrats!

May 2021: MS student Virginia Brown wins a GSA Student Research Grant!

April 2021: Dr. Miranda and students in her new Geology and Environmental Justice class attend the opening night of an art show at the Environmental Justice art gallery at the Watts Labor Community Action Center (WLCAC). The 'Sick of It' art show was sponsored by Better Watts Initiative, and the students co-created an installation with BWI leaders showing petroleum contamination beneath the Ujima Village housing complex from an old Exxon tank storage  facility.

January 2021: Miranda has been named CSUN's new Co-Director of Faculty Equity and Compliance as part of the Provost's Equity in Tenure-Track Hiring Program. This is a half-time administrative position in which she will report directly to the Provost to implement innovative, creative, and effective practices that result in diversifying the professoriate at CSUN. She will work with Co-Director Dr. Sylvia Macauley (CSUN Dept. of History) and with the CSUN AVP of Equity and Compliance Mr. Barrett Morris on this initiative.

December 2020: The CSUN Fiordland Research Group is featured in the documentary series "Fire, Ice, and Tremors: The Unique Geology of Fiordland National Park".

November 2020: Three undergraduate students join the Miranda Group to work on environmental justice-themed research with Dr. Miranda. Welcome Patricia Lopez Lima, Joshua Cottingham, and José Tepal!

September 2020: MS student Virginia Brown joins the Miranda Group! Welcome, Ginny!

June 2020: Dr. Miranda is awarded a CSUN Community Engagement Pedagogical Grant to add a service learning element to the Senior Capstone in Geology class for Fall 2020. We partnered with the Better Watts Initiative to address environmental contamination of soil, air, and water in Watts in South LA.

May 2020: Miranda is honored with the CSUN's Outstanding Faculty Award for Teaching, Research, and Service. CSUN President Dianne Harrison personally wrote this note to Dr. Miranda: "I was so pleased to see you received an Outstanding Faculty Award in recognition of your teaching, mentoring, and service to CSUN and the community. Your efforts, especially for our underrepresented students, serve as a tribute to CSUN. Congratulations on all you have achieved and best wishes for a successful close to the spring semester. Stay safe and be well! --Sincerely, Dianne".

March 2020: Miranda ran the LA Marathon again, and about 40 minutes faster than the previous year.

February 2020: Dr. Miranda is invited to give a talk at the UCLA Center for Diverse Leadership in Science Conference: Obstacles to STEM for Underrepresented People of Color.

December 2019-January 2020: Miranda and MS student Matthew Dietel complete a fantastic field season in Fiordland in collaboration with the rest of the Fiordland Team, including Prof. Schwartz (CSUN), co-advised MS student Brandon Page (CSUN), Prof. Klepeis (Univ. Vermont) and MS student Emily Lincoln (Univ. Vermont), and our New Zealand collaborators Rose Turnbull and Richard Jongens.  

September 2019: Dr. Miranda is an invited panelist for the 'What Is A Fault Zone" talk/discussion at the SCEC Annual Meeting in Palm Springs. Dr. Miranda's student advisees (Miguel Zamora Tamayo and Jennifer Bautista) attend the SCEC conference and present their research in the poster session.

August 2019: MS student Matthew Dietel joins the Miranda Group--welcome to the program!

March 2019: Miranda ran the LA Marathon. Turns out it was easier than processing an EBSD map with Channel5 software and having it not crash.

February 2019: MS graduate Lonnie Hufford is accepted to the Ph.D. program at ETH-Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Whitney Behr. Outstanding!

December-January 2019: Another glorious field season in Fiordland! Boat work + helicopter work = geologic heaven.

August 2018: MS graduate Lonnie Hufford is hired for a non-degree seeking research assistant position at UC San Diego working in Dr. Emily Chin's lab as an EBSD gun-for-hire. An awesome research opportunity!

July 2018: Academic siblings Courtney McGinn and Lonnie Hufford successfully defend their outstanding theses. Great job! Courtney also goes for gold and gets a job offer the same day she defends her thesis.

May 2018: MS student Lonnie Hufford wins the Outstanding Graduate Student Award in the Department of Geological Sciences. Congrats! 

May 2018: MS students Lonnie Hufford and Courtney McGinn make outstanding presentations at the EBSD 2018 conference at the University of Michigan, where Dr. Miranda served as a Co-Organizer of the EBSD Conference.