University of Maryland Geology Department

Congratulations to friends of the department who participated in the 12th Annual Mark Lipella Golf Tournament at Black Rock Golf Course in Hagerstown. The tournament is held in honor of Mark who was a 2004 graduate of the department and tragically passed away in 2011. To date, the Mark Lipella Foundation has supported 46 scholarships to our undergraduates.

is your chance to support and uplift !

There are numerous ways to support the Geology department today, but consider supporting one of our two endowments: the Geology Student Endowment and the William Smith Endowed Program Support Fund in Geology.

William Smith Endowed Program Support Fund in Geology — William Smith ’81 established the William Smith Endowed Program Support Fund in Geology in October 2023. Funds will provide the department flexibility to respond to programmatic needs not normally supported by other funding sources, including but not limited to the Field Camp program, a four to six-week immersive program that teaches essential geologic field skills. (https://givingday.umd.edu/campaigns/william-smith-endowed-program-support-fund-in-geology)

Geology Student Endowment — This endowment provides undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, supplies, field work, research, scientific conferences, lab equipment, student training materials, and dissemination of findings. (https://givingday.umd.edu/campaigns/geology-student-endowment)

You can find these and other ways to contribute at https://www.geol.umd.edu/giving

Congrats to graduate student Ben Moyer who has been selected to receive a Computational Science Graduate Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Energy
DOE CSGF

This fellowship provides financial support for up to 4 years, 12 weeks of research experience in a DOE national lab and a rigorous program of study.

https://www.krellinst.org/csgf/about-doe-csgf

Professor Nicholas Schmerr's () field geophysics class are using ground penetrating radar to search for hidden graves at Emory Grove United Methodist Church in Montgomery County, MD.

A History Hidden From View

A History Hidden From View Geology Students Search for Early Gravesite of Historic African American Church

Congratulations to graduate students Sumedha Desikamani, Lucas Andrews, and Cosmo Varah-Sikes who have been awarded "Future Investigator in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology" (FINESST) grants.

Future Investigator in NASA Space Science and Technology (FINESST) awards are research grants worth $150,000 that support graduate student research for a period of three years. Each of our student awardees wrote and submitted research proposals to this prestigious program, which has a success rate of only around 15% each year.

Cosmo Varah-Sikes will be researching the origin and significance of a spinel-rich deposit on the Moon; Sumedha Desikamani will be quantifying the volatile budget of ordinary chondrite meteorites; and Lucas Andrews will be researching laser desorption mass spectrometry of refractory organics in ancient microbial mats.

UMD alum Chris Yakymchuk (Ph.D. 2014) has been awarded the 2024 Early Geological Career Award from the Mineralogy, Geochemistry, Petrology and Volcanology Division of the Geological Society of America!

At Maryland, under the direction of Michael Brown, Chris studied crustal anatexis and differentiation, particularly trace element behavior, as part of a field and laboratory investigation of high-grade metamorphic rocks and granites in the Fosdick Mountains of West Antarctica.

UMD Scientists ‘Fingerprint’ Methane to Track a Climate Change Culprit Emissions of the Potent Greenhouse Gas Have Spiked Since 2007—but Why Is Unclear

Several hundred gathered on Saturday to celebrate the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the founding of the Department of Geology at Maryland. The group, made up of alums, friends and current members of the department, participated in a field trip, lab tours, and a dinner that was hosted at the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center.

🎉 SAVE THE DATE! 🎉

Department of Geology’s
50th Anniversary Celebration

Saturday, October 7, 2023
Evening
Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center
7801 Alumni Drive, College Park, MD 20742

As UMD’s Department of Geology completes its 50th year since its inception, we will recognize this milestone by hosting a series of events that will culminate with this celebration. Nearly 250 guests attended our 40th-anniversary celebration—sharing stories, getting reacquainted with classmates and faculty members, and making new memories. We look forward to even greater attendance at the 50th. Please save the date and plan on attending!

~Sarah Penniston-Dorland, Phil Piccoli and Rich Walker (The 50th Anniversary Planning Committee)

If you have any questions about the event, please contact Phil Piccoli at [email protected] or 301-405-6966.

Tom Holtz was recently on NBC4 Washington discussing the recently discovered bone bed at Dinosaur Park in Laurel, MD.

'Most important dig site east of the Mississippi': Maryland paleontologists announce 'bone bed' containing hundreds of fossils Paleontologists at Dinosaur Park are thrilled about a newly announced bone bed, a rare cluster of many different prehistoric species that called Laurel, Maryland home. Here’s what to know.

Katie Gansler, Jacob Giles, Alex Lastner, and Siobhan Light spent the evening of Saturday, June 24 volunteering at the Smithsonian Institution's Solstice Saturday. As part of Astronomy Festival on the National Mall, Katie, Jacob, Alex and Siobhan taught visitors about how planetary scientists use geophysics to study the interior structures and shallow subsurfaces of Earth and other terrestrial planets.

Our undergrads are ready to graduate! Watch the livestream starting at noon at http://youtube.com/

Katie Gansler, Lori Willhite, and Sophia Zipparo went to Felegy Elementary School’s Career Day on May 12. They went to 10 classrooms to talk to students about the possible professions available to geologists. Students participated in activities where they either examined different rocks to figure out which ones were meteorites, or they used their sense of touch to understand how geologists learn about parts of the Earth that are too deep to visually observe.

The Spring 2023 class of GEOL 102 Historical Geology finished off the semester with a trip to the PG Dinosaur Park site (Arundel Clay Member of the Patuxent Formation) in Laurel, MD

Congratulations to Alex Taylor (Masters) and Amelia Lindsay-Kaufman (PhD Candidate) for being winners in their respective categories in the UMD 3-Minute Thesis competition!

You can watch Alex's talk at https://youtu.be/rQHOgYC1ems?t=1771

and

Amelia's talk at https://youtu.be/rQHOgYC1ems?t=4508

Congratulations to Alex Taylor and Sandy Herho who both successfully defended their masters theses in the past week!

Tytrice Faison (Geology, B.S. 2022) and Prof. Alan J. Kaufman of the UMD Geology Department, along with Equinor and GMU colleagues Swapan Sahoo and Geoff Gilleaudeau just published a paper in Nature on the cause of a series of mass extinctions in the Late Devonian Period. The work was based on geochemical analyses of the Bakken Shale, a major oil and gas producer for the United States. Tytrice was a student in Kaufman's Once and Future Planet Carillon Community, and continued after the course to work in his laboratory for two years on the Bakken Shale project. She completed her Senior Thesis with Dr. Richard Ash and is currently looking to enter graduate school in the geosciences.

https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/news/major-north-american-oil-source-yields-clues-one-earths-deadliest-mass-extinctions

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Megan Newcombe on receiving a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation!

https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/news/umd-geologist-megan-newcombe-receives-national-science-foundation-career-award

Scientists Created a Device to Find Alien Life That's So Tiny It Fits In Your Hand The miniature device weighs only 17 pounds and can be deployed on a rover to unambiguously detect signs of life on another world.

Associate Professor Nick Schmerr, Assistant Professor Mong-Han Huang and graduate student Kathrine Udell Lopez's recent trip to Antarctica was featured in today's Maryland Today newsletter.

Research at the Frozen End of the Earth On Coast of Antarctica, Geology Team Investigates Ins and Outs of World’s Largest Ice Shelf

https://today.umd.edu/t-rexs-fancy-footwork-owed-to-special-ligaments-study-finds

T. Rex’s Fancy Footwork Owed to Special Ligaments, Study Finds UMD Researcher Part of Team That Helped Explain Dinosaur’s Speed, Endurance

Congratulations to current Baylor PhD student Alyssa Mills (BS '18 Geology/Astronomy at UMD) who was selected as one of 11 John Mather Nobel Scholars nationwide by the National Space Grant Foundation.

https://blogs.baylor.edu/artsandsciences/2022/10/11/alyssa-mills/

Is There an Intro to Grad School Class I Can Take? | Maryland Sea Grant The Friday before classes start holds a mixture of excitement, nerves, and anticipation. Each year on that day, the geology department holds its graduate orientation, an all-day event where first-year to fifth-year students come together to learn not only about policies, but also about each other. I...

Join us this Thursday 10/6 at 6pm EDT for the George and Rosalind Helz Distinguished Lecture in Geology with Dr. Susan Brantley from Penn State University where she will discuss the effects fracking has on our water.

More details can be found at https://science.umd.edu/events/helz-2022.html

An international team of researchers with the NASA InSight mission located four new craters created by impacts on Mars' surface – marking the first time that researchers have been able to capture the dynamics of an impact on Mars.

“Studying how impacts work on Mars is like opening a window into the fundamental processes of how terrestrial planets form,” said UMD Geology's Nick Schmerr.

Nick co-authored a paper in Nature Geoscience on how the NASA InSight research team used seismometer data to calculate the impact locations. Read more: go.umd.edu/marscraters

Congratulations to Andrea Mundl-Petermeier, UMd Postdoctoral Associate from 2015-2018, has been named the recipient of the 2022 Hisashi Kuno Award of the VGP Section of the American Geophysical Union. This early-career award recognizes “outstanding contributions to the fields of volcanology, geochemistry, and petrology."

Salt in water sources becoming worrisome in D.C. region, experts warn Amid rampant growth, D.C. region and other metropolitan areas face 'freshwater salinization syndrome' that may become irreversible, researchers say.