I am a Ph.D. Candidate working with advisor Steve Jacobsen in the mineral physics and high-pressure science group at Northwestern University. I study the physics and chemistry of minerals to understand geological and geophysical processes from atomic to global scales. My research focuses on studying mineral inclusions encapsulated in diamonds, the only natural samples from Earth’s deep mantle, to gain a better understanding of the composition of Earth’s deep interior. The image featured above is a photomicrograph I took of one such diamond (this photo was featured in the 2017 Science and Society Northwestern Scientific Image Contest). I promote the non-destructive characterization of mineral inclusions encapsulated in diamonds to preserve high-pressure phases, oxidation states, and volatile contents. My particular focus is on shedding light into the depth and heterogeneity of water in Earth’s mantle. I am working on a large collection of super-deep diamonds from Juína, Brazil, as part of the Deep Carbon Observatory in collaboration with Graham Pearson at University of Alberta and Steve Shirey at Carnegie Institution of Washington. Much of my research is conducted at the GeoSoilEnviro Center for Advanced Radiation Sources at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory where I use X-ray microtomography and X-ray diffraction to characterize diamond inclusions. I study minerals at high-pressure and high-temperatures relevant to the conditions within Earth’s interior, which allows me to recreate the conditions that mineral inclusions are subjected to within the diamond to understand how they survive the ascent to the surface. I have experience with Raman spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Ultraviolet-Visible (UV-VIS) spectroscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray microtomography, X-ray fluorescence and electron microprobe analysis.
Education:
Ph.D. Earth and Planetary Sciences, expected 2019, Northwestern University
M.S. Experimental Geosciences, 2015,University of Bayreuth, Germany
B.S. Geosciences, 2013, University of Arizona