Credit: Connie Bertka.

DTM's Steven Shirey received a Fellowship medallion from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) at the society's Honors Ceremony on Wednesday, 15 December.  Each year only one out of one thousand AGU members is elected to Fellowship.

A member of DTM's geochemistry and cosmochemistry group, Shirey uses the trace element and isotopic compositions of natural terrestrial minerals and rocks to understand the geodynamic and magmatic processes that have shaped the Earth.  His main focus has been on the formation of the continents, the only chemical differentiation process to span nearly all of Earth history and to record changes in these processes over time.  A recurring theme of Shirey's work has been the demonstration that ancient episodes of magmatism and crust formation operated differently from those operating today.