Goldschmidt 2015: Introducing the Bloggers (1/3)
It’s less than a week before thousands of Geochemists descend on Prague to meet for the 25th Goldschmidt Conference. This is set to be a stellar meeting with a wide variety of social and student events, not to mention the huge number of world class oral and poster presentations through the week. In addition to the regular schedule, to celebrate this year’s 25th anniversary of the Goldschmidt Conference, there will be 25 anniversary presentations given by distinguished researchers from each theme.
This year we have team of 8 bloggers who will be writing, tweeting, and presenting throughout the meeting. We’ll be giving you our personal highlights, pointing you towards parts of the programme you may have missed, covering the plenary presentations and social events, and trying to capture the essence of Goldschmidt 2015. On the team are Jess Barnes (Open University), Fred Bowyer (University of Edinburgh), Andy Bray (University of Leeds), Deirdre Clark (University of Iceland), Adrienne Macartney (University of Glasgow), Nicci Potts (Open University), Rhian Rees-Owen (University of Leeds), and Drew Steen (University of Tennessee).
We’re also privileged to have our first ever Goldschmidt Artist-in-Residence, Nastasia Louveau. Nastasia has a booth on the 3rd floor where she will, amongst other things, be displaying her “Doodle a Day” during the week.
We’d really like you to get involved with the online part of the meeting, whether you’re attending or not. You can do this by reading and sharing our posts, tweeting using the official Goldschmidt hashtag #GT15, and saying hello to us around the conference centre.
Over the next 3 days (and 3 posts) we’ll be introducing ourselves, the blogging team. Here are the first 3, Jess, Fred, and Deirdre!
Jess Barnes
Hi there, I am a postdoctoral research associate at the Open University (OU), UK. I successfully defended my thesis on ‘Water in the Moon’ last December with the OU and the Natural History Museum, London. My research focussed on the analysis of water and its H-isotopic composition in Moon rocks, mostly samples brought back by the six NASA Apollo missions, together with some lunar meteorites. To analyse the samples I used a range of in situ microbeam techniques in order to answer some important science questions like: Is there any water in the Moon? If so then where did it come from? And what does it mean for the delivery of volatiles to the Earth-Moon system ca. 4.5 billion years ago? More recently I have been developing a method to enable high-precision in situ measurements of volatiles and chlorine isotopes in the mineral apatite using a Cameca NanoSIMS 50L. I’ll be speaking about H and Cl in lunar apatite on Wednesday morning at 9.30 in session 23A. At Goldschmidt 2015 I’ll be found in sessions on isotope geochemistry, planet evolution and differentiation, and volatiles in magmatic systems, and will be tweeting as @jessrocks88!
Hi, I’m Fred, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. I’m interested in the chemical evolution of terminal Ediacaran ma rine environments with specific focus on early calcifying metazoan ecosystems. My PhD has so far been concerned with helping to reconstruct the redox architecture of sections from Namibia and South China utilising the iron speciation method. Future work will include investigation of weathering extent through use of Strontium and Lithium isotope proxies, and potential for pH reconstruction via non-traditional stable Boron analyses.
At Goldschmidt, I’m particularly looking forward to sessions covering themes of ocean geochemistry, geobiology, biogeochemistry, evolution of Earth’s environment, early Earth, and weathering and surface processes. I’m also interested in the themes of planetary chemistry, and cosmochemistry and astrophysics. As this is my first Goldschmidt meeting I’ll be trying to cram in as much as possible!
Deirdre Clark
Góðan daginn! I am a PhD Fellow at the University of Iceland. Originally from the United States and Canada, I completed my master’s degree in hydrology and geochemistry at Utrecht University (NL) before joining Sigurdur Gislason and his group in Reykjavik last year. I am also a part of the Marie Curie Network, CO2-React, which so far has been an amazing training program.
My research focuses on whether CO2/H2S can be stored in minerals >250°C and to assess the risk of toxic mobility during CO2/H2S-charged water pulses into basaltic rocks. I have been working closely with Reykjavik Energy and the CarbFix/SulFix projects at the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant in SW Iceland where CO2/H2S injection is currently taking place. A poster of this project is Thursday evening in Session 13G!
This year’s Goldschmidt will be my first large-scale scientific conference and honestly I am not exactly sure to expect. I am definitely excited to explore the various facets of the geochemistry field and meeting new people! Feel free to follow me on twitter (@clarkdeirdre). See you around!