DTM Postdoc Blog

Former DTM postdoctoral fellow Nader Haghighipour (2001-2004), an associate astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Institute for Astronomy, and a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute since its creation in 1998, was recently interviewed by TIME Magagine.  Check it out!

 

Postdoctoral Fellow Terry Blackburn and his wife Suzie became new parents! Finnian Bear, their new son, was welcomed by all his friends at DTM!!

 

 

MESSENGER postdoctoral associate Shoshana Weider and the origin of the mysterious green rock from space….a meteorite from Mercury?? On NPR’s All Things Considered.

Postdoctoral Associate Hanika Rizo Garza received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award (le Grand Prix Jeune Chercheur) for her work on ocean magmatism.  The prize is awarded for both the quality of the researcher’s PhD work and their ability to communicate the research to the general public.

 

 

DTM was treated to a hearty breakfast of omelettes and waffles for having the highest return on a Carnegie-wide survey.  Go DTM!!

 

18-22 March 2013:  44th LPSC Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Postdocs attending:

Paul, Christian, Shoshana, Terry, and Aki.

 

 

We look so forward to the arrival of Mélanie Gérault, Marion Garçon, Timothy Rodigas, and Jemma Davidson to our campus!!

Mark your calendars!!!  Center for Center for Communicating Science workshop scheduled for Thursday, 17 October in the Greenewalt Building.

The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) hosted an International Science Meeting at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on 3-5 March 2013.  Marion Le Voyer and Jared Marske, DCO postdoctoral fellows, each presented a poster at the meeting.  Marske’s poster was entitled “Osmium isotopic systematics for Hawaiian submarine lavas: a deep mantle plume or lithospheric source?”.  Le Voyer’s poster was entitled “Carbon inventory of oceanic basalts and the oceanic upper mantle.”  Check out a perspective Marion Le Voyer wrote some months ago on her experiences as a DCO fellow.

Check out this Youtube video of the MESSENGER mission.  Postdocs Paul Byrne, Christian Klimczak, and Shoshana Weider are members of this mission. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj5ImXTy-kM

Blast from the Past:  Former postdocs Chris Kincaid and Craig Bina, along with former staff scientist Julie Morris (in purple), W. Kent Ford, Jr. (far left, whose retirement we were celebrating), and assistant to George Wetherill, Mary Coder.  1990

we love our postdocs

It is never too late to celebrate the accomplishments of our former postdoctoral fellows and the recognition they receive.  In December 2011 former astronomy Vera Rubin fellow Alceste Bonanos received the Greek L’Oreal-UNESCO Prize 2011 for Women in Science.

Congratulations to Brian Jackson and Maki
on the birth of their beautiful daughter Alice Caroline!

 

HAPPY INAUGURATION DAY

21 JANUARY 2013!!!!

Visit National Academy of Sciences Open House, especially if you need to warm up with some hot chocolate!

Congratulations to Paul Byrne and Aoife, who tied the knot this January in Dublin!  Way to begin the New Year!

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our postdocs past and present!!!!  May 2013 be a great year for you all!

 

DTM postdocs attending the Fall 2012 AGU in San Francisco:  Ryan Porter, Deborah Smith, Frances Jenner, Liyan Tian, Shoshana Weider, Paul Byrne, Christian Klimzack, Jared Marske, Christelle Wauthier, Kelsey Druken, Terrence Blackburn

Former astronomy Postdoctoral Fellow Evgenya Shkolnik (now at Lowell), with former astronomy Fellow Guillem Anglada-Escude (now at Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen) and staff scientists Alycia Weinberger and Alan Boss, and others, have written “a set of directions” when searching for undiscovered planets that reside around other stars.  See The Astrophysical Journal for complete article.

This infrared image was taken at 1.6 microns with the Keck 2 telescope on Mauna Kea. The star is seen here behind a partly transparent coronagraph mask to help bring out faint companions. The mask attenuates the light from the primary by roughly a factor of 1000. The young brown dwarf companion in this image has a mass of about 32 Jupiter masses. The physical separation here is about 120 AU. Also, the primary star was identified as a young star for the first time by Dr. Shkolnik. Image Credit:  B. Bowler/IFA

 

Campus fall picnic,
Friday, 26 October

Welcome,  Willkommen, Welkom, Willkumm, Velkommen, Bene bennios, Sansofe, Yang shok, Irashaimasu, Bienvenue, Bienvenido, Benvenuto, Marhaba, 欢迎, Khosh Aamadid, hoşgeldin!, Здравствуйте…. to the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington!

Goodbye luncheon was held on the 23rd of October for Zan Peeters! 

His last day is 31 October, then off to Indonesia!

DTM welcomes Postdoctoral Associate Hanika Rizo who will be working with Rick, Lindy, and Rich Walker (UMD).  Hanika recently completed her Ph.D. at the Laboratoire Magmas et Volcans, Universite Blaise Pascal, in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and will be working on the isotope geochemistry of the deep Earth and what it can tell us about processes of planetary accretion and differentiation.  Welcome Hanika!

MESSENGER Postdoctoral Fellow Paul Byrne located an impact basin on Mercury that resembles Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster. What do you think?

Former Postdoctoral Fellow Lydie Bonal (2010) is visiting DTM for two weeks and will continue her collaborations with Conel Alexander on the hydrogen isotope compositions of water chondrites.  She is currently working at the Institut de Planetologie etd’Astrophysique de Grenoble.  Bienvenue Lydie!

On 19 September Marion Le Voyer participated in an outreach event at the Smithsonian.

Marion is a DCO Fellow at Carnegie and works jointly with DTM’s Erik Hauri and Smithsonian’s Elizabeth Cottrell.  Marion commented on volcanic activity under the ocean and showed rock samples from the Seafloor Rock Collection.

 

Former DTM Postdoctoral Fellow Fred Pollitz (1989-1991) is the lead author in a Nature paper (published online 26 Sept. 2012) entitled “The 11 April 2012 east Indian Ocean earthquake triggered large aftershocks worldwide.” See Washington Post coverage of this research on the seismic triggering effects of earthquakes. 

Former DTM postdocs Katie Kelley (geochemistry 2003-2005, and recipient of the 2011 Hisashi Kuno Award from the American Geophysical Union) and Brian Savage (DTM geophysics 2004-2006) are the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl Sylvia Charlotte Savage, born 6 September 2012, weighing 6 lbs, 7 oz.  CONGRATULATIONS Katie and Brian!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Former Fellow (2007-2009) Alex Song returned in September for a month’s visit as a short-term scholar and visiting investigator.  Alex comes to us from the Yokohama Institute for Earth Science, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and will be re-evaluating models and measurements of anisotropy in subduction zones with our geophysicists.

DTM welcomes Terrence (Terry) Blackburn to our campus!  Terry received his Ph.D. this past spring at MIT and specializes in geo-and thermochronology.  You will love it here Terry!

 

This past month we said “see you later” to Stella Kafka (AIP) and Nick Moskovitz (MIT).  We wish you both much success in your new positions!  Please don’t forget us, and come back to visit us!  Stay in touch through this blog!!!

 

 

Welcome Postdoctoral Fellow Pamela Arriagada, who will be working with Paul Butler on the exoplanet survey!!  Pamela completed her Ph.D. at the Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile.  Her thesis was entitled “Towards Rocky Planets Using the Planet Finder Spectrograph.”

Heard through the grapevine that Brian Jackson and his wife Maki are expecting a child sometime in January 2013!  Stay tuned!!

Former Postdoctoral Fellow Chin-Wu Chen returned to Taiwan following his visit to DTM where he was working with Matt Fouch and David James on the scattered wave imaging of the High Lava Plains crust and upper mantle.  Chin-Wu is an Assistant Professor at the National Taiwan University in Taipei.

 

Click here to see photos of former DTM Postdoctoral Fellow Natalia Gomez-Perez, former GL Postdoctoral Fellow Stewart McWilliams, and their son Mateo vacationing in Maine. Photos courtesy of GL Predoctoral Fellow Amol Karandikar.

 

The 2012 Goldschmidt Conference (Earth in Evolution) took place this year in Montreal, Canada, from 24-29 June.  DTM Postdoctoral Fellow Marion Le Voyer attended the conference, in addition to Staff Scientists Conel Alexander, Rick Carlson, Erik Hauri, Steve Shirey, and Geochemistry Lab Manager Mary Horan.  Le Voyer’s talk  (research conducted while a Postdoctoral Fellow at Caltech) was entitled “The nanoSIMS as a tool to study zonation around/in melt inclusions,” under Session 23a: Frontiers in fluid and melt inclusion research.

Former DTM Postdoctoral Fellows gather together for an alumni dinner during the 17th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun, which took place from 24-29 June in Barcelona, Spain.  Former Postdoctoral and Hubble Fellow Mercedes Lopez-Morales was the chair of the Science and Local Organizing Committees for this meeting.

 

The 2012 Mud Cup 2012 took place on  8 June 2012
DTM Dynamos (5) vs. GL Pistons (2)

Captains: Zan (DTM) and Adrian (GL)
More photos of the Exciting match!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome Christelle Wauthier!  Christelle completed her Ph.D. in September 2011 at the Université de Liège, Belgium.  She is an InSAR geodesist who uses advanced processing methods to obtain high-resolution time series of deformation in volcanic areas.  She will be working with Diana Roman to study the balance of endogenous and exogenous growth of Kilauea volcano, Hawai’i, using a combination of InSAR analysis, finite element modeling, and analysis of complementary and contemporaneous data sets (SO2 output, thermal satellite data, GPS data) collected at Kilauea.

MESSENGER Postdoctoral Fellows Christian Klimczak (center) and Paul Byrne (right) in Istanbul near the end of their visit to study planetary tectonics with former Senior Tuve Fellow Celȃl Şengör.

Welcome Carnegie Fellow Ryan Porter, who will be working with Staff Scientist Matt Fouch.  Ryan received his Ph.D. this spring in seismology at the University of Arizona.  His research interests include earthquake seismology, active tectonics, crustal and upper mantle structure, subduction zone processes, and seismic anisotropy.

Predoctoral Fellow Sabrina Ferrari returned to the University of Padua on 6 April.  On 4 April she presented a lecture entitled “The geology and structure in and around the Rembrandt basin, Mercury.”  We will miss you Sabrina!

 

Welcome Kelsey Druken!  Kelsey comes to us from Rhode Island, where she received her undergraduate degree in Physics and her PhD in Oceanography from the URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography.  At DTM, Kelsey will be working with David James on the High Lava Plains experiment.

Welcome Deep Carbon Observatory Postdoctoral Fellow Marion Le Voyer!!  Bienvenue! Marion completed her Ph.D. in igneous petrology petrology from the CNRS at Clermont-Ferrand in 2009 and spent the last two years as a postdoctoral associate at Caltech.

The Caloris Waltz by Larry Nittler and guest violinist Paul Byrne at the 17 October Reception in Honor of Sean C. Solomon.    Piano solo by Larry Nittler of his Caloris Waltz.

For a trip back to DTM memory lane, click here.  All photos from the past are welcomed!

DTM Women Postdoctoral Fellows:  Please see Position Openings link on this blog!  Other openings are also listed courtesy Dr. Elkins-Tanton, Paul Butler, Alycia Weinberger, and others.  Click on Housing/Nearby Hotels/Childcare/Preschool for info on local and nearby full-day care centers, provided by Alycia Weinberger.

*********************Events:

Holiday party, 14 December, 4-7 pm, Greenewalt Building

Postdoctoral Development Program: Thursday, 8 November,

3 pm at the Greenewalt Lecture Hall:  Roles and Responsibilities of Mentors

12 November is Veterans Day, a campus holiday.

Thanksgiving Potluck Lunch, 19 November

NLS, 6 pm 25 October: Tim Strobel

CPR/First Aid Training completed after two sessions: 1st session was held on 10 April, 2nd session was on 24 April!!  Now also have 2 defibrillators on campus and lots of first aid trainees!

Posters can be printed using the titian poster printer in the map room (R162) on the first floor of the Research Building.  A new large format printer is now also available for use.  It is a Canon iPF8300S and is named asimov, and is located in R169.  Please follow Michael Acierno’s instructions to visit the Canon web site to download the appropriate driver for your operating system.