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Archived news from the faculty, researchers, students and staff of the Department of Geology and Geophysics.

• Shun Karato and Bruce Moskowitz have been selected as a Fellows of the American Geophysical Union. (1/00)

• Two faculty members will be busy this winter giving lectures, having been invited to participate in Distinguished Lecturer programs. Donna Whitney will be giving a series of lecturers as the Mineralogical Society of America Distinguished Lecturer. David Kohlstedt has been invited to visit five universities in Japan as the Distinguished Lecturer of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. (1/99)

• Mark Person has been selected as a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. (1/99)

• Sally Gregory Kohlstedt has been elected to the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1/99)

• Shun Karato will receive a Japanese Academy Award for 1999. Eight awards are given annually to outstanding contributors to the areas of liberal arts, science and technology (including philosophy, economy, political science, medical science, physcs, mathematic, geological science etc.). The award will be presented to Dr. Karato by the emperor of Japan (His Majesty!) in June. (1/99)

• Marc Hirschmann has been selected as one of only seven recipients of University of Minnesota McKnight Land-grant Professorships for 1999. This award is a tribute to all that Marc has accomplished in a relatively short time at Minnesota. (1/99)

• Dimitrs Xirouchakis received the 1998 Ktenas award in Mineralogy from the Academy of Athens for his paper "Equilibria among titanite, hedenbergite, fayalite, quartz, ilmenite, and magnetite: Experiments and internally consistent thermodynamic data for titanite". The award is named after Konstantinos Ktenas, a well-respected Greek petrologist/mineralogist who made significant contributions to the regional geology and also served as president of the International Association of Volcanology and the Chemistry of the Earth before WW II. The Academy of Athens is considered the most prestigious scientific organization in Greece. (12/98)

• We are pleased to announce that Marc Hirschmann received a 1998 NSF CAREER Award. This award emphasizes the importance NSF places on the early development of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning. (12/98)

• Department Head and Professor Bill Seyfried and Senior Research Associate Kang Ding were invited to spend June 22 to July 4 aboard the R/V Atlantis, the newest oceanographic research ship operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They will be diving in the scientific submarine, Alvin, to the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of Washington, field testing a chemical sensor designed to determine the H₂ levels in the vent fluids. (6/98)
  R/V Atlantis

• Congratulations to graduate student, Dan Doctor, who has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for 1998-99 to study the karst area of Slovenia and northern Italy. He also received a similar Scholarship from the Academy for Educational Development through the National Security Education Program (NSEP). These scholarships will allow Dan to work in his field area for nearly two years. (6/98)

• Larry Edwards and Emi Ito have been promoted to Full Professors. (5/98)

• Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Professor-History of Science and Technology, has been elected to the University Senate for a three-year term through June, 2001. (5/98)

• Congratulations to Elise Bekele, Denis Cohen, Jeff Dorale, and Jennifer York for receiving 1998-99 Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships! (5/98)

• 1997-98 Outstanding Service Awards (Support Staff)
  Sharon Kressler, Office Specialist
  Rick Knurr, Senior Scientist, Aqueous Geochemistry Lab
  

1998-99 Departmental Student Awards

• Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards
  Ryan Hoffman
  Jennifer Houghton
  Cathy Stott
  

• Undergraduate Students
  
  • Dennis Undergraduate Scholarships
    Cathy Stott
    Jacqueline Couillard
    Steve Kiddler
    Jon Tortomasi
    Rachel Bursheim
    
  • Aldrich Award
    Rachel Bursheim
    
  • Donath Honors Scholarship
    Steve Kiddler
    

• Graduate Students
  
  • David K. Jensen Award
    Christoph Geiss
    
  • William H. Emmons Fellowship
    Elise Bekele
    
  • Dennis Graduate Fellowships
    Ben Holtzman
    Dan Doctor
    
  • John W. Gruner Fellowship
    Haemyeong Jung
    
  • Francis Gibson Graduate Fellowship
    Karen Gran
    
  • Samuel Goldich "Footsteps" Award
    Kirsten Banks
    
  • Harold M. Mooney Fellowship
    John McDaris
    
  • V. Rama Murthy and Janice Noruk Fellowship
    Doug Allen
    
  • Herbert E. Wright "Footsteps" Award
    Jeff Dorale (5/98)
    

• The BBC interviewed Dave Yuen on his work on modelling mantle plumes and its relationship to flood basalts. Movies of time-dependent 3-D thermal convection were filmed by the British crew at the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute. This will be part of an hour long program to be shown in BBC and eventually distributed world wide.
  
  Dave Yuen has been appointed to head the Editor of the Geophysics section of a new journal called Electronic Geosciences,which will focus on detailed imaging in geological processes. This will be a truly electronic journal, where one can attach MPEG movies and sophisticated 3D graphics such as VRML to written text. (5/98)

• Mark Person and Rachel Surber were married on April 3, 1998. (4/98)

• Join the Hard Rock Lunch, a permanent addition to the weekly departmental seminar offerings. The Hard Rock Lunch is an informal gathering of people interested in petrology and related geochemical and geophysical sciences. Meets on Tuesdays at 12:30 in room 121. Each week the Hard Rock Lunch features a presentation from a graduate student, post-doc, faculty member, or visitor about current hard-rock related research. Initial presentations have covered theoretical, experimental, and field petrology. So bring your lunch and join us! (4/98)

• Cathy Hier, graduate student working with Christian Teyssier, was awarded a three-year NSF Fellowship starting in 1998-99. (3/98)

• Congratulations to Paul Morin (Visualization Specialist) and his wife Lisa on the birth of their new son, August Logan Morin. (3/98)

• Subir Banerjee recently visited the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad and the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, Mumbai in India to consult on possible cooperative research on climate change records of the past. He also gave a seminar, "Magnetic Proxies of Abrupt Climate Change in Alaska" at the Physical Research Laboratory and discussed the possibility of Minnesota students training in thermoluminescence dating at this laboratory. (3/98)

• V. Rama Murthy was elected a member of the National AAUP Committee on Teaching, Research and Publications (Committee C). For this year, the Committee is charged with studying departmental governance, faculty and graduate student teaching loads. Also, Murthy has been nominated for election to the University Senate Faculty Consultative Committee for a three year term ending in 2000. (2/98)

• Emi Ito will be a keynote speaker at the Graduate Student Research Symposium being organized by the students at the Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, March 20 and 21. The title of her presentation is "Holocene Aridity History of Northern Great Plains." (2/98)

• Christian Teyssier has been invited by the faculty of the University of Graz, Austria, to give two short-courses in the period March 9-20 on (1) Three-dimensional Strain Theory and Tectonics, and (2) Thermochronology and Orogenesis. (2/98)

• H.O. Pfannkuch spent the first week of February in Paris and Amsterdam. He discussed the project of an expanded electronic version of his "Elsevier's Dictionary of Environmental Hydrogeology" in English, French and German with ELSEVIER SCIENCE PUBLISHERS, Amsterdam. It is to be produced on CD-ROM, the preferred medium for future multilingual dictionaries of the publisher. The time in Paris was spent, if not in its entirety then at least in great part, with professional contacts and in library research to find and define new and updated hydrogeologic terms in French. (2/98)

• Frederick M. Swain, Professor Emeritus, recently completed a manuscript, "Fossil Nonmarine Ostracoda of the United States." It treats biostratigraphy, paleoecology and systematics of about 500 species, Carboniferous to Pleistocene. The work is probably his last monograph in a subject area in which he began research nearly 60 years ago. (2/98)

• Announcing the Hard Rock Lunch, a permanent addition to the weekly departmental seminar offerings. The Hard Rock Lunch is an informal gathering of people interested in petrology and related geochemical and geophysical sciences. It is meeting this term on Tuesdays at 12:30 in room 121 and/or room 110. Each week the Hard Rock Lunch features a presentation from a graduate student, post-doc, faculty member, or visitor about current hard-rock related research. Initial presentations have covered theoretical, experimental, and field petrology. So bring your lunch and join us! The Winter schedule is already full and presentation opportunities for spring term are filling quickly, so those of you eager to make a presentation this year should contact this year's HRL coordinator, Marc Hirschmann, soon. (2/98)

• Marc Hirschmann, Assistant Professor, was invited to the University of Michigan to give the Turner Lecture entitled "The Role of Lithologic Heterogeneity in the Origin of Oceanic Basalts." He has also been invited to present this talk at Berkeley in February. (2/98)

• Robert E. Sloan, Professor Emeritus, is co-author of newly published book, Origin and Evolution of Earth: Principles of Historical Geology, Kent Condi and Robert Sloan, Prentice Hall, 1998, ISBN 0-13-491820-7. (2/98)

• Donna L. Whitney, Assistant Professor, has been awarded a 1998 McKnight-Land Grant Professorship. This award will fund research to understand mountain formation, a process that profoundly affects the Earth's structure, topography, and climate. Because mountain-building is typically accompanied by exposure of rocks that formed deep in the crust, formerly inaccessible rocks are brought to the surface and provide information about the depths, temperatures, and rates of deep crustal processes that accompany the construction of mountains. (2/98)

Graduate Degrees Granted

• Mark Zimmerman, PhD, 1999, The structure and rheology of partially molten mantle rocks. Advisor: David Kohlstedt.
• Benjamin K. Holtzman, MS, 1999, Two geologic examples of a rigid inclusion deforming in a ductile matrix: fractured pebbles and chromite pods. Advisor: Christian Teyssier.
• Christoph E. Geiss, PhD, 1999, The development of rock magnetic proxies for paleoclimate reconstruction. Advisor: Subir Banerjee.
• Stefanie A. Brachfeld, PhD, 1999, Separation of geomagnetic paleointensity and paleoclimate signals in sediments : examples from North America and Antarctica. Advisor: Subir Banerjee.
• Elise B. Bekele, PhD, 1999, Anomalous pressures and fluid migration within the Alberta Basin, Canada. Advisor: Mark Person.
• Xian Chen, PhD, 1998, A study of fluoride mobility with applications to subseafloor hydrothermal processes. Advisor: William E. Seyfried Jr.
• Dirk Slawinski, MS, 1998, Varied lake sediments from Midwestern North America, indicators of cyclical climate change. Advisor: Kerry Kelts.
• Denis Cohen, Ph.D., 1998, Rheology of basal ice at Engabreen, Norway. Advisor: Roger LeB. Hooke. (12/98)
• Ginny Catania, M.S., 1998, A physical model of pressurized flow over an unconsolidated bed: implications for subglacial braided channels. Advisors: Roger LeB. Hooke. and Chris Paola. (7/98)
• Michelle Markley, Ph.D., 1998, The structural and thermal evolution of the Siviez-Mischabel nappe, western Swiss alps. Advisor: Christian Teyssier. (6/98)
• Luther Strayer, Ph.D., 1998, Numerical models of fault-related folding, duplexing and orogenic wedge evolution. Advisor: Peter Hudleston. (6/98)
• Gideon N. Ngobi, M.S., 1998, Environmental history of Lake Victoria and its drainage basin since the last glacial maximum - evidence from sediment magnetism. Advisor:: Kerry Kelts (6/98)
• Gunther Kletetschka, Ph.D., 1998, Magnetic and petrologic characteristics of lower crustal metamorphic rocks, Labrador. Advisor: James H. Stout. (5/98)
• Ryan Hoffman, M.S., 1998, Extent, frequency, and patterns of occurrence of herbicides and insecticides in U.S. urban streams. Advisor: Calvin Alexander and Paul Capel (Civil Engineering). (4/98)
• Olivier Vanderhaeghe, Ph.D., 1997, Role of partial melting during late-orogenic collapse. Advisor: Christian Teyssier. (2/98)
• Lora Stevens, Ph.D., 1997, Stable-isotopic composition of varved lake sediment: implications for climatic change in Minnesota. Advisor: Herb Wright Jr. (2/98)

For additional information, email k-ohler@tc.umn.edu