Research
Externally funded projects within the department span a wide range of research areas. These projects include substantial amounts of field, lab, and computational work. Many of the research projects are collaborative both within and outside the department, with notable ties to Argonne National Labs, EarthScope, and the Chicago Botanic Gardens, to name just a few.
Geographically, our research projects and collaborations have brought us to Namibia, Greenland, China, the large icebergs of the Ross Sea off Antarctica, the mountains of the Andes, northern Italy, southern France, Uganda, various Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) sites, the Wyodak-Anderson coal bed aquifer in Wyoming, sites extending from Texas to Ontario and California to Kansas, the Northern Slope of Alaska, Arctic Canada, and central Illinois. Event we have not personally been, we have studied the planetary surfaces and interiors of Mars, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Titan, and Europa, as if we were there :-)
Graduate students carry out a significant portion of the Department's research under the guidance of experienced faculty and staff. Undergraduate students also participate in ongoing research.
These times of emerging global stewardship of our planet and the associated energy transition are exciting times for our department. Please visit the links shown to the left for more information about the department's research.