It’s been quite a while since I provided an update on what the Virginia Tech Sedimentary Systems Research group is up to. Here’s a rundown of our activities over the past several months:

First, although it’s always sad to see a member of the group leave, I am also filled with joy to see them move on to the next stage. Former PhD student and post-doc of the group, Cody Mason, is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Western Georgia. Cody finished up his post-doc in summer 2018 and started at UWG that fall. We have some results from detrital zircon studies of the Amazon submarine fan we shared in this EarthArXiv pre-print, with the peer-reviewed paper (hopefully) coming very soon. I’m looking forward to collaborating with Professor Mason in the years to come!

Ph.D. student Natalia Varela has finished her first full year in the program and has hit the ground running. In summer 2018, Natalia attended the IODP Petrophysics Summer School in Leicester, UK and, later that summer, participated in the IODP Expedition 374 sampling party at the Gulf Coast Repository at Texas A&M University. Natalia’s dissertation research is focused on Miocene through Pleistocene continental slope deposits recovered during IODP Exp 374 in the Ross Sea, Antarctica (read the Exp 374 Preliminary Report). In addition to her research activities, Natalia has also been a teaching assistant for Sedimentology-Stratigraphy and Natural Resources courses.

Ph.D. student Sebastian Kaempfe is in southern Chile right now for his third field season. His dissertation research is part of the industry-funded Chile Slope Systems project, a multi-institution collaboration with colleagues and students at the University of Calgary and Colorado State University. Sebastian presented preliminary results of the first chapter of his dissertation work at the AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition in May 2018 and also participated in the annual Chile Geological Congress in Concepcion, Chile in November 2018. Sebastian TA’d the Sedimentology-Stratigraphy course in fall 2018.

Ph.D. student Andrew Parent has been quite busy both leading and contributing to various different projects. A lot of progress was made in generating a late Eocene-mid Oligocene terrigenous grain-size record from IODP Site U1406 (Newfoundland Ridge drifts) to complement former SSR student Kristin Chilton’s record from Site U1411. Drew presented a poster with these new data at the AGU Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C. in December 2018. Drew and I have also been collaborating with researchers in the Civil & Environmental Engineering department on an American Chemical Society-funded grant on ‘sortable silt’ flume experiments. CEE master’s student Jeff Culp presented a poster of our preliminary results at AGU. Finally, Drew worked with collaborators in the Mining Engineering department to help with seismic stratigraphic characterization of the South Carolina Trough for a Dept. of Energy-funded project to characterize offshore carbon storage potential.

As for me, I’ve been traveling around the U.S. as one of the IODP distinguished lecturers for the 2018-2019 academic year. I’m honored to be among the six lecturers for this year and have been having tons of fun sharing our IODP science. My talk summarizes our work on the Newfoundland drifts (Exp 342) and previews the research to come from the Ross Sea (Exp 374). Here’s a 4-minute video that science communicator Kim Kenney produced as both a summary and advertisement of the talk: