Graduate Student Opportunities
The Department of Earth Sciences is now accepting applications for graduate admission in the Spring of 2008. Listed below are some specific research opportunities for prospective graduate student applicants in the coming year. Prospective graduate students are encouraged to directly contact the listed professors to express an interest in any of the research opportunities described below. Apply now!
- Prof. Ethan Baxter is looking for students interested in conducting field and lab-based studies to measure the rates of geochemical reactions, deformation and mass transfer. The new NSF-funded Bu Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometer Facility (operational in 2006) will provide an exciting tool for this reseach.
- Prof. Colleen Dalton welcomes graduate students interested in studying the Earth's interior with seismic waves on global and regional scales. There are also opportunities to study earthquake source properties and processes. Students with computational and/or field interests are strongly encouraged to apply.
- Prof Sergio Fagherazzi is seeking graduate students interested in coastal and fluvial geomorphology, tidal and waves dynamics, hydrology, numerical modeling of surface processes, and coupling between ecology and geomorphology (ecogeomorphology). Research projects are organized in two groups: fieldwork and numerical modeling. Current research projects are conducted in Plum Island Sound, Massachusetts, Florida Panhandle, Eastern Shore of Virginia, Louisiana Chenier Plains, Thailand Andaman Coast, Venice Lagoon Italy, and Fly River Papua New Guinea. Ongoing research is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Petroleum Research Fund, and the Department of Energy.
- Prof Duncan FitzGerald is seeking graduate students interested in shallow marine sediment transport, coastal evolution, wetlands, tidal inlet hydraulics, and hydrodynamics. These studies involve fieldwork, lab analyses, and numerical modeling. Research will be conducted in Gulf of Maine, North Carolina, the Mississippi River delta, and the Santa Catarina coast of Brazil. Ongoing research is supported by the NOAA, National Park Service, U.S.G.S, Minerals Management Service, and UNIVALI, Brazil.
- Prof. Paul Hall is seeking graduate students interested in convection in the Earth's mantle. Students will have the opportunity to employ both numerical (i.e., computational fluid dynamics) and laboratory (i.e., fluid tanks) models to investigate the interactions between plate tectonics and mantle convection that give rise to volcanism at the Earth's surface.
- Prof. Andy Kurtz is seeking graduate students interested in the relationship between chemical weathering processes, geomorphology and hydrology. Research areas include Puerto Rico, Papua New Guinea, and Hawaii. Future projects will take advantage of the new BU TIMS facility to develop powerful new isotopic tracers of weathering and biogeochemical cycling.
- Prof. David Marchant is seeking graduate students interested in quantifying rates of landscape evolution in polar deserts and exploiting comparisons between buried glaciers in Antarctica and buried ice on Mars. Students will conduct field research in the Dry Valleys region of Antarctica (helicopter-supported field camps) for at least two months while enrolled at Boston University.
- Prof. Rick Murray is seeking graduate
students interested in geochemical paleoceanography to work on projects
relating to the redox history of the Cariaco Basin, with specific interests
in comparing studies based on modern sediment traps to those targeting the
longer Holocene and Pleistocene evolution of the tropics.
Graduate Research Opportunity in Physical Oceanography:
Collaborative Research -- UMass Dartmouth and Boston Univeristy
A Ph.D position is available to study submesoscale dynamics and its effects on the vertical transport, mixing and distribution of properties in the upper ocean. The research, based on a combination of theory, modeling, and data analysis, will be supervised by Amit Tandon, UMass Dartmouth (508-999-8357, atandon@umassd.edu) and Amala Mahadevan, Boston University (617-353-5511, amala@bu.edu). Qualified students possessing strong physics, mathematics, and computer skills should contact either of the above. Applications are encouraged for Spring or Fall 2007 admission to the Ph.D. program at UMass Dartmouth. The student would be based in the UMas wide Intercampus Graduate School for Marine Science and Technology (IGSMST http://www.umassmarine.net/admissions/) and the Physics department, UMass Dartmouth.