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Welcome!
We are the University of Chicago Department of the Geophysical Sciences. We study the history, interior, and exterior of Earth and other planets.
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People
Our world-class scientists are fascinated with the natural processes that shape our world and cultivate the skills it takes to study them.
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Facilities & Resources
From wave tanks to mass spectrometers, our department's laboratories allow our scientists to push the limits of their fields.
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Research Spotlight
Professor Sue Kidwell uses the fossil record from the last thousand years to understand changes in biological baselines due to human populations.
Learn More Spotlight ArchiveStudent / Alumni Spotlight
Stewart Edie is a paleobiologist who wants to understand why some groups of organisms are more diverse that others, and how extinction prunes the tree of life.
Learn More Spotlight ArchiveFaculty Spotlight
Malte Jansen is a creative physical oceanographer with impressive mathematical chops and great taste in problems.
Learn more about Malte See all PeopleGeophysical Science News
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Discover UChicago 2019
July 11, 2019
Considering grad school in the geosciences? UChicago offers talented individuals from traditionally underrepresented populations an expenses-paid opportunity to explore graduate education on campus. Application deadline is August 15th, 2019. https://grad.uchicago.edu/admissions/diversity/discover/
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Microbio makes it to the Tribune
July 11, 2019
Field work by graduate students María Hernández-Limón and Justin Podowski and Assistant Prof. Maureen Coleman was recently featured on the front page of the Chicago Tribune! The team has been sampling the Great Lakes to better understand their microbial ecosystems. Congratulations to all!
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Olson, Jansen, and Abbot identify the best planets for life.
July 01, 2019
T.C. Chamberlin Postdoc Stephanie Olson showed that not all planets with oceans are equally habitable at AbSciCon 2019 in Bellevue, WA. She described the types of planets that will make the best hosts for ocean-dwelling life, and her models will inform NASA's search for life in the Universe by identifying favorable targets for life detection missions. Assistant Prof. Jansen and Associate Prof. Abbot also contributed to the study, which has been highlighted in Cosmos Magazine. Congratulations to all!
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Io’s eccentricity cycles tied to volcanism in Loki Patera
June 29, 2019
A recent publication by Katherine de Kleer of Caltech, Francis Nimmo of UC Santa Cruz and our own Assistant Prof. Edwin Kite was just featured in the New York Times! de Kleer et al. explored the relationship between Io's eccentricity cycles and activity in the moon's largest volcanic depression. The paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters in May. Congratulations to all!
Io in IR from Feb. 2016 to July 2017, de Kleer et al.
