SPRING 2024
Nikki Vilasuso won a SURE award from WVU to fund her summer undergrad. research. Way to go, Nikki!
Sarah Titta accepted a PhD student position in coastal studies at East Carolina University. We’re proud of you, Sarah!
Maya Bradford is awarded the Eberley College’s Best Teaching Assistant Award…. for the second time!
Martha Gibson completed her 2-year term at the REO Lab as a Lindemann Trust Visiting Scholar. She taught us a lot about pollen and spores in halite and gypsum and we’ll miss her greatly. Martha now is a palynologist for PetroStrat.
Maya Bradford published her first peer-reviewed paper! It is entitled “Gypsum lakes, sandflats, and soils revealed from the Triassic Red Peak Formation of the Chugwater Group, northcentral Wyoming: and appear in v. 10 of The Depositional Record.
Fall 2023
Kathy Benison was awarded the Erasmus Haworth Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Kansas Geology Department.
Our science projects had an excellent presence at the GSA Connects meeting in Pittsburgh. Undergrads Sara Titta, Matt Ellis, and Nikki Vilasuso gave presentations, as did Maya Bradford, Martha Gibson, Karena Gill, and Kathy Benison.
Martha Gibson and Kathy Benison’s paper “It’s a trap!: Modern and ancient halite as Lagerstatten” in JSR. We got the cover photo!
Emily Johnson joined our Red Earth Obervatory research group as a new M.S. student in Geology. Welcome, Emily.
Maya Bradford started a PhD dissertation, after completing her M.S. on textures of bedded gypsum in the Triassic Red Peak Formation of Wyoming.
Karena Gill completed her post-doc in our lab and started a position as Visiting Assistant Professor at Washington and Lee University. She also recently published a paper about her post-doc research in Geology, submitted a second paper from her post-doc, co-organized the NABG conference in Washington, DC, and gave talks at GSA Connects in Pittsburgh, PA and LPSC in The Woodlands, TX.
SPRING 2023:
Ryan Prchlik successfully defended his M.S. thesis, “A study of accidental daughter crystals in fluid inclusions in bedded halite from the Permian Opeche Shale and Cedar Hills Sandstone of the midcontinental United States”. He has accepted a job working as a mine geologist.
Maya Bradford is awarded the Eberley College’s Best Teaching Assistant Award!
Maya Bradford completes her M.S. Geology thesis, entitled “Continental saline environments interpreted from bedded gypsum of the Triassic Red Peak Formation (Chigwater Group), northcentral Wyoming. She will be contining her research on Permo-Triassic gypsum as a PhD student in our lab.
Fall 2022:
Dr. Karena Gill started as a NASA Post-Doctoral Research. She will be studying fluid inclusions in Mars-analog salts in preparation for Mars sample return.
SPRING/SUMMER 2022:
Along with lab group grads Sara Schreder-Gomes and Jeremiah Bernau, Kathy co-authors paper in GEOLOGY about microorganisms in ancient halite:
Dr. Martha Gibson joined us as a Lindemann Trust Visiting Scholar. She is a palynologist interested in pollen and spores trapped in halite.
Ryan Prchlik was awarded a NASA West Virginia Space Grant Graduate Fellowship for his research proposal entitled “Using daughter crystals in halite fluid inclusions to determine new diagnostic indicators of acid saline lake conditions”.
Fall 2021:
Matthew Ellis was awarded a NASA West Virginia Space Grant Undergraduate Research Grant for his project “Acid minerals in halite of the Opeche Shale”.
SPRING/SUMMER 2021:
Kathy Benison started her term as a science editor for the GSA journal GEOLOGY.
Sara Schreder-Gomes passed her Masters thesis defense.
Maya Bradford was awarded the $2000 Edwin McKee Grant from the Rocky Mountain Section of SEPM, the Society for Sedimentary Geology, to conduct research on gypsum in the Triassic Red Peak Formation in Wyoming.
Brigitte Petras completed her M.S. in Geology. Her thesis interpreted deposition and diagenesis of the Permian Blaine Formation in Kansas.
FALL 2020:
Our proposed technical session “Out of This World Lakes” will be part of the 2021 GSA Annual Meeting in Portland! It will be co-sponsored by GSA’s Limnogeology Division, GSA’s Planetary Geology Division, GSA’s Quaternary Geology Division, SEPM, and The Geochemical Society.
Jonathan Knapp completed his PhD and continues to work as a scientist for Bruker Nano. Congratulations to Dr. Knapp!
Bradley Smith graduates with his B.S. in Geology and was named the Geology program’s “Best Graduating Senior”.
Kathy Benison was named a Geological Society of America Fellow!
Maya Bradford joins our research group as a geology masters student. Maya comes to us from Emory University’s Environmental Sciences program, where she completed a senior thesis on trace fossils.
Maya in the field.
SUMMER 2020
Sofia Andeskie completed her PhD and became a Scientist at Mojave National Preserve. Congrats to Dr. Andeskie!
Spring 2020
Sara Schreder-Gomes was awarded a Geological Society of America student research grant for $2500 for her work on microorganisms preserved in fluid inclusions in Proterozoic halite.
Brigitte Petras was awarded a Student Research Grant from SEPM, the Society for Sedimentary Geology for $1300 for her research on the depositional conditions and diagenetic history of the Permian Blaine Formation in Kansas.
FALL 2019
Sofia’s paper on the Hutchinson Salt online:
Kathy Benison was chosen as a Return Sample Selection Participating Scientist for the Mars 2020 mission!
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SPRING/SUMMER, 2019
Jackson Jakeway successfully defended his M.S. Thesis “Beneath the gypsum dunes: Cenozoic history of wind and water from a core drilled at White Sands, New Mexico” on April 29.
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