Department of the GeoPhysical Sciences

Geophysical Science News

• UChicago Department Alumni Francois Tissot named Packard Fellow

  January 11, 2022

  The Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering are among the nation’s largest nongovernmental fellowships, designed to allow maximum flexibility in how the funding is used. Since 1988, this program has supported the blue-sky thinking of scientists and engineers whose research over time has led to new discoveries that improve people’s lives and enhance our understanding of the universe. Congrats to Francois Tissot, a UChicago alum. And while we're at it, Mark Levin also recieved the honor as part of UChicago Department of Chemistry.

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• Congratulations Dr. Anne Davis!

  December 22, 2021

  Anne Davis successfully defended her Ph.D thesis on December 8^th titled “The chemical and physical properties of carbon bearing phases in the deep Earth”. Anne’s committee was Andrew Campbell, Fred Ciesla, Andrew Davis, Dion Heinz, and Razvan Caracas.

  What’s next for Dr. Davis? She’ll be moving to Oslo to be a postdoc at the University of Oslo, working with Dr. Razvan Caracas on noble gas partitioning between metal and silicate using initio molecular dynamics methods. Congrats again!

• Sunny Park is using lasers and 3D models to simulate earthquakes

  December 14, 2021

  At UChicago printed 3D models of the Los Angeles basin are bombarded with megahertz-frequency laser light to generate tiny earthquakes. The results have been surprising. Sedimentary basins have long been believed to be amplifiers of ground motion, but the new data is “in some sense opposite of our conventional understanding,” said Park.

  Get a better feel for seismic ground motions right here.

• Nicolas Dauphas, Nicole Nie, Timo Hopp, Justin Hu, Zhe Zhang and other scientists at the Origins Lab at UChicago reveal conditions in early solar system

  December 03, 2021

  Most meteorites are made of tiny beads of glass that date back to the earliest days of the solar system, before the planets were even formed. The beads of glass inside these meteorites are called chondrules. Scientists with the University of Chicago have published an analysis laying out how these beads, which are found in many meteorites, came to be—and what they can tell us about what happened in the early solar system. “It’s a huge question in the field of cosmochemistry,” said Dauphas.

  Now, finally, the team is happy to have put a significant dent in the mystery. Read the full article, by Louise Lerner, by clicking here.