People

Cecilia Cadio (postdoc) - Cecilia is an expert on wavelet transform and potential field theory, and she is currently working on geoid anomalies over the Pacific ocean to derive robust observational constraints on the evolution of oceanic lithosphere and sublithospheric mantle dynamics. She is also planning to explore the relation between mantle rheology and surface observables through parametric inversion. Cecilia received a Ph.D. from Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in 2010. 

Benjun Wu (postdoc) - Benjun has been working on long-term mantle dynamics and its connection to core evolution. She is currently quantifying the effects of depth-dependent viscosity on the scaling of mantle convection, by a series of numerical modeling as well as theoretical analysis. This study will allow us to better understand the role of the lower mantle in the evolution of terrestrial planets at large. Benjun received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 2011.                                     

Jill VanTongeren (postdoc) - Jill is an igneous petrologist (shown here in front of Stillwater Complex in Montana), working on an array of projects, one of which is to quantify the compositional buoyancy of oceanic lithosphere, both at present and in the ancient past, by combining field data and theoretical modeling. This is a critical issue to be nailed down if we want to understand the onset of plate tectonics on Earth. Jill is a Bateman fellow and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2011. 

Erin Wirth (PhD student) - Erin is a seismology student working on seismic anistropy in subduction zones around the world, and to understand what seismic anistropy actually tells us, she has also been working with me on the geodynamic modeling of subduction, with a particular emphasis on the role of small-scale convection in the wedge mantle. Using the finite element method with a 3-D single-mode extention, she is exploring wedge mantle dynamics in a systematic manner, as a function of various slab parameters. 

Xu Chu (PhD student) - For his minor discourse project, Xu (shown here in front of Vredefort dome in South Africa) has worked on the dynamics of continental lithosphere, by exploiting an intriguing geochronological pattern preserved in cratonic xenoliths. By combining simple fluid mechanics with xenolith observations, he was able to achieve three goals in one shot: test the validity of olivine flow laws, estimate the stress level in the upper mantle, and constrain effective grain growth in polymineralic mantle rocks. 

H. Patrick Young (PhD student) - Patrick is a petrology student (shown here at Stromboli in Italy) with strong interests in the relation between mantle convection and continental dynamics. He has been working with me to understand how the assembly of a supercontinent can potentially affect the thermal structure of the mantle. This is a long-standing issue in geophysics, and his study is centered on the notion of Earth scaling, which has long been undervaluded in previous studies.

Xiaojun Chen (PhD candidate) - Xiaojun has just started to work with me for his minior discourse project, which is to decipher the meaning of "mantle heat flux", a frequently misunderstood concept in previous studies. He is currently trying to establish scaling laws for partitioning between conductive and advective heat flux, both for incipient convection and fully developped convection. Such scaling laws will have important bearings on the thermal evolution of oceanic as well as continental lithsphere. 

Adria Melendez (PhD student @ University of Barcelona) - Adria has been upgrading my 2-D seismic tomography code to 3-D. Increasing the dimension of somebody else's code is quite a feat (if not impossible), and the amount of bookkeeping required for a 3-D code is considerable. Yet Adria has been cheerfully making steady progress. He will employ this new code to analyze data collected from a subduction zone off Ecuador. His thesis is co-supervised by Valenti Sallares (my buddy in Barcelona) and myself.

Joseph O'Rourke (class of 2012) - Joe is a super-energetic undergrad always working on a variety of things (shown here in a hypobaric chamber at NASA's Johnson Space Center, during a simulated flight to 25,000 ft), and one of them is to work on a senior thesis for a geophysics degree. It was originally about the evolution of Venus (which by itself is quite a substantive subject), but the rapid pace of his progress allowed him to also tackle on a more general topic of establishing a 'reference' evolution model for terrestrial planets including super-Earths.

Ben Mullet (class of 2013) -  Ben is a physics major who has recently become  interested in geophysics. As a starter, he has started to work with me on nailing down crustal rheology by critically evaluating the statistics of experimental constraints. He plans to combine his results with mantle rheology and investigate feedback between rock mechanics and mantle dynamics at subduction zones, where great earthquakes and vigorous volcanism take place. Stay tuned!

Catherine Padhi (class of 2014) - Being a highly motivated sophomore, Catherine has worked with me on a project on the thermal evolution of Earth, more specifically, its relation to noble gas geochemistry. She studied how xenon isotopes could constrain the thermal budget of Earth, by building a theoretical framework that relates the cooling of Earth and its degassing history in a self-consistent manner. She got really cool results, and we are currently wrapping this up for publication.

Past Members and Projects:
Abigail Fraeman (B.Sc., 2009) - Thermal evolution of Mars
Ian Rose (B.Sc., 2009) - Scaling of bending dissipation in plate tectonics
Jesse Day (B.Sc., 2009) - Physics of terrestrial magma ocean
Tanya Lyubetskaya (M. Phil., 2005) - Composition of primitive mantle (I & II)
Tadashi Kito (postdoc, 2008-2010) - High-resolution teleseismic migration