by Kasey Cunningham

From December 5 to 9, space and Earth scientists from DTM traveled to the 2011 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California. This year’s conference hosted 20,000 attendees. Among the 12,000 poster presenters and 6,000 oral presenters were 16 DTM staff scientists and postdoctoral fellows. Paul K. Byrne, Chin-Wu Chen, Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Matthew J. Fouch, David E. James, Christian Klimczak, Diana Roman, I Selwyn Sacks, Steven Shirey, Deborah Smith, Sean C. Solomon, Daoyuan Sun, Fouad Tera, Liyan Tian, Shoshana Z. Weider, and Visiting Scientist Cecily J. Wolfe all presented on a range of topics varying from the High Lava Plains project to the formation of early water oceans on rocky planets.

"The conference provided an exciting opportunity to share with the wider geology community, our new findings from MESSENGER since it has been in orbit around Mercury," said DTM postdoc Shoshana Weider who presented the latest MESSENGER findings.

Liyan Tian, also a DTM postdoc, was able to get feedback on her research initiatives. After she discussed the geochemical comparison of alkalic lavas in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, Peninsular Baja California and intraplate volcanoes in the eastern Pacific, she was approached by several experts who study volcanoes in Mexico.

“They gave their comments, and provided very useful suggestions to clarify our ideas. In sum, it was a great experience to present my work and get feedback from excellent scientists in the same field.”

Next years conference will be held December 6-12, 2012.