Title: Graduate Student

Group: Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometer Laboratory (TIMS Lab)

Area(s): Geology

Research Summary:  My current research focus is exploring the timing, duration, and recharge of high-silica rhyolite magmatic systems which can produce catastrophic caldera forming super-eruptions. By using high-precision Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry (TIMS) geochronology on accessory minerals (specifically zircon) we can temporally constrain, and geochemically fingerprint, eruptive events in order to understand the difference between a magma system that pools in the shallow crust and solidifies, and one that erupts into a catastrophic super-eruption. I am currently working on Quaternary high-silica rhyolite systems in the Rio Grande Rift area of New Mexico.

Keywords: geochronology, volcanology, igneous petrology, magmatic systems