Photo courtesy J. Dunlap

MESSENGER Fellow Christian Klimczak arrived at DTM today after receiving his Ph.D. from the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno.  Klimczak has worked on a variety of topics in fracture, rock, and soil mechanics in terrestrial and planetary tectonophysical settings. For his thesis, Klimczak studied the effects of physical properties and material behavior on the modes, mechanisms, and geometries of fractures in rocks in several extensional and contractional tectonic regimes. As a MESSENGER Fellow, Klimczak will focus on the tectonic evolution of Mercury. He will study the patterns and causes of faulting on global and regional scales, and he will relate the locations and geometry of the faults to the known thermal heterogeneity of Mercury’s uppermost crust.  He will also examine the relation between topography and faulting patterns within large impact basins, such as the Caloris and Rembrandt basins.