Recent events
The MCS team is presenting two online workshops at the Goldschmidt Virtual Conference in Lyon, France. The workshops times have been chosen to reach as many folks as possible. The dates and times (Paris time zone that may translation to participant local time) are Tuesday 29 June, 2021, 21:00-23:55 and Thursday 1 July, 2021, 14:00-20:00. NOTE: Times are given in Paris time and need to be translated to your local time zone. For more information, go to: https://2021.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/2021/meetingapp.cgi/Session/1832 or contact a MCS Team member. If you wanna rock your rocks, you need to attend this dynamite session: a gneiss time is to be had.
Congratulations to MCS team member Jenna Adams who defended her PhD dissertation on July 24 2020 with flying colors! Jenna’s dissertation research included the study of magma mixing and phase equilibria using the MCS to study some exceptionally radiogenic submarine lava flows from Samoa. Her work also involved development (with Dr Aaron Wolf at the University of Michigan, Mark Ghiorso (OFM), and Frank J. Spera (UCSB)) a new ternary garnet solid solution model with applications partial melting of garnet peridotite and eclogite. Her PhD defense was conducted on Zoom (the first in earth Science at UCSB) with an audience of over 50 participants, some from distant locations. The defense was a great success! Dr. Adams begins in October 2020 a postdoctoral research position at the Colorado School of Mines with Professor Wendy A. Bohrson. Congratulations Jenna! You are Awesome!
Congratulations to MCS member Guy Brown (MCS Program Development Engineer) on becoming a grandfather! Daughter Anna gave birth to a baby girl July 27 2020. Welcome to the world Minerva Iris Noble. The MCS team congratulations to Mom, Dad, and the Grandparents (Deborah and Guy Brown). To the hardcore MCS users, click the tab ‘Programmer’ to find out more about Guy Brown and his perspective on computational petrology at UCSB in the past 25 years.
The MCS team notes that MCS team member Melissa Scruggs has just been named as one of only 40 participants in AGU’s 2020 Voices for Science program. This initiative, now in its third year, aims to help scientists share the value and impact of Earth and Space Science with key decision makers, journalists, and public audiences, to increase the widespread understanding of and support for science. Melissa’s award letter commends her enthusiastic promotion of science’s societal benefits, an effort capitalizing on her communication and advocacy skills. Congratulations Melissa! You are super!
MCS member Wendy A Bohrson has recently assumed the position of Chair in the Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, Colorado School of Mines. To her herculean efforts with the MCS and related research she will now add another set of tasks to be accomplished! The MCS team is happy to congratulate her on her new position.
Professor Frank J Spera has retired after 43 years of university teaching (Princeton university 1977-1986 and UCSB since 1986) and now holds a joint emeritus Research position in the Earth Research Institute and Department of Earth Science at UCSB. He continues to advise PhD students at UCSB but no longer accepts new PhD or MS students. In addition to MCS and research in magma dynamics, geochemical thermodynamics, and related topics in planetary science, Professor Spera continues to study drum set percussion and is currently working on Elvin Jones triplets and the John Bonham half-time shuffle. Drum on dude!