Join Our Team!

The purpose of this page is to let you, the prospective student, learn more about what we do and what skills you will learn working as part of our research team. More about our specific, long-term projects and the contributions we have made can be found on the research page. Otherwise, read on to see what you can do as a biochemist or chemist working in our group! You do NOT have to be enrolled in physical chemistry or have taken physical chemistry to join and make important contributions to our work.

What is geochemistry?

Geochemists are chemists that specialize in understanding and studying the physical and chemical processes of the earth. This includes reactions such as dissolution or precipitation of inorganic solids, physical aggregation of organics and colloids, oxidation/reduction reactions in soils and water, and the structure and behavior of solid/fluid interfaces, for example. Geochemists study natural processes over a wide range of scenarios, including those that take place at the surface (nutrient cycling) and deep underground (magma thermodynamics).

I'm a biochemistry major. What can I do in the Bowers Group?

There are a LOT of projects for biochemists in our group! We are very interested in biomineralization reactions, which are reactions in the human body that produce minerals. For example, understanding how kidney and other renal stones form and how to prevent their formation is an ongoing group project where we have already published work. Other students have studied the potentially crucial roles of clay minerals in the origin of life, such as catalyzing lipid bilayer formation, while others have looked at what the chemistry of fossils tell us about the biology of ancient animals. We are also interested in exploring organisms that thrive in extreme environments, such as in supercritical carbon dioxide reservoirs. And though we have not worked in this area before, biota drive most of the environmental REDOX chemistry.

But I have not taken physical chemistry yet...

Taking the main course sequence I teach is not a prerequisite to working in the group. In fact, not being bound by what you learn in the course helps you to ask critical, fundamental questions that may lead to new discoveries. As with any research group, we will learn the fundamental conceptual knowledge you need as we go. Even better, if you learn some physical chemistry through working on a research project, you will recognize concepts when they come up in the course and the course will augment your existing understanding, rather than you having to build an understanding from scratch.

What if I do not want to work in the laboratory?

No problem! The first step to developing successful research projects is to be familiar with a body of literature, the opportunities for contributing to it, and evaluating what significant contributions can be made with the resources at your disposal. There are always opportunities to conduct literature research projects that help the group explore new research avenues.

Another option is to get involved in a computational project. We have a dedicated computational chemistry workstation that runs NWChem software via a WebMO web interface. Other students have pursued projects using reactive transport modeling codes such as PHREEQ to study issues of scale on modeling geochemical processes. Writing code to process or analyze data is also a computer based option in the group.

OK, I am still reading, so this sounds interesting. But what if I have my own project idea?

Original research ideas are always welcome. In general, it is good if your idea has some tie to a strong research interest in the group (think something that happens at a solid-fluid interface), but you are always welcome to come chat with Dr. Bowers and other group members about an idea.