Author: College of Engineering

Sue Hill is the Digital Content Manager for the College of Engineering.

Two Faculty Named to Endowed Positions in GMES

Snehamoy Chatterjee and Jeremy Shannon have been appointed to two endowed faculty fellow positions in the Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences (GMES).

Witte Family Endowed Faculty Fellow in Mining Engineering

Snehamoy Chatterjee
Snehamoy Chatterjee

Chatterjee, associate professor in GMES, has been appointed the new Witte Family Endowed Faculty Fellow in Mining Engineering, a position created to retain and attract highly qualified faculty who are at the top of their profession, inspire students to think beyond the classroom material, and integrate their research into the classroom.

Chatterjee was instrumental in developing GMES’s new interdisciplinary program in mining engineering and now teaches several key courses for this program. He continuously updates his courses to adopt new teaching and technological approaches and incorporates research in his instruction. He is always looking out for students’ best interests by seeking ways for them to participate in research and design projects in order to enhance their learning and professional development.

Carl G. Schwenk Faculty Fellow in Applied Geophysics

Jeremy Shannon
Jeremy Shannon

Shannon, principal lecturer and undergraduate student advisor in GMES, is the new Carl G. Schwenk Faculty Fellow in Applied Geophysics, a position established to provide students with practical knowledge and intuition that, when combined with exceptional instruction, promotes mobility for an impactful and rewarding career in the field of applied geophysics.

Shannon provides instruction for nearly all courses in the field of applied geophysics and lends his expertise to Senior Design courses and graduate students whose research involves field geophysics. He also maintains GMES’s field geophysics equipment, and has been successful in obtaining funding to purchase new equipment. (During one of Carl Schwenk’s previous visits, Jeremy showed him both our current equipment as well as past equipment that had been in storage, which truly impressed Carl.)

As an academic advisor for GMES’s undergraduate majors, Shannon creates individual plans in order to offer the best academic and professional pathway for that student.

By the Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs.

GMES Grad Student Presentation Wins GSA Award

Daniel J. Lizzadro-McPherson
Daniel J. Lizzadro-McPherson

The Department of Geological and Mining Engineering Sciences (GMES) announced that master’s student Daniel J. Lizzadro-McPherson’s talk, “Remapping the Keweenaw Fault and Discovery of Related Structures in Michigan’s Historic Copper District,” was awarded the Best Graduate Oral Presentation from the Geological Society of America’s (GSA) 2020 North-Central Section Meeting, held online this past May 2020.

The talk was featured in the Unique Geology and Geoheritage of the Lake Superior Region Session led by Erika Vye (GLRC), William Rose (GMES), Jim Miller, and James DeGraff (GMES).

Lizzadro-McPherson presented on the history of mapping the Keweenaw Fault and the current remapping efforts aimed at understanding this complex fault system in northern Keweenaw County. For more information about this project or to receive a link to the virtual presentation please email djlizzad@mtu.edu.

Explore the eight presentations in the session by Michigan Tech researchers:

  1. REMAPPING THE KEWEENAW FAULT AND DISCOVERY OF RELATED STRUCTURES IN MICHIGAN’S HISTORIC COPPER DISTRICT
  2. ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF FOLDS AND FAULT SEGMENTS ALONG THE KEWEENAW FAULT SYSTEM, MICHIGAN
  3. KEWEENAW SHORELINES: SHALLOW WATER SCIENCE, HISTORY, EDUCATION AND GEO TOURISM + YouTube Video
  4. GEOHERITAGE AND THE ARTS: BUILDING AWARENESS USING THE KEWEENAW MINES + YouTube Video
  5. DIGITAL CAPTURE AND PRESERVATION OF HISTORIC MINING DATA FROM THE KEWEENAW COPPER DISTRICT, MICHIGAN
  6. TEACHING THE GEOLOGIC HERITAGE OF MINNESOTA’S NORTH SHORE AT THE NORTH HOUSE FOLK SCHOOL, GRAND MARAIS
  7. SHIPWRECK EXPLORATION WORKSHOP IN NEARSHORE KEWEENAW WATERS
  8. CONNECTING RESEARCH AND COMMUNITY – A KEWEENAW LAKE SUPERIOR NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY
GSA North-Central Duluth 2020 Superior rocks logo of Lake Superior.

Thank You Ted Bornhorst

Ted Bornhorst
Ted Bornhorst

The Department of Geological and Mining Engineering Sciences offers our congratulations and best wishes to Theodore J. Bornhorst on his retirement after a long and productive career as Director for the A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum and professor at the Department of GMES! He has inspired many with his passion for mineralogy and Keweenaw geoheritage.

We are happy that he will continue his research at our department as a professor emeritus.

Aleksey Smirnov is an Outstanding Reviewer

Aleksey Smirnov
Aleksey Smirnov

Aleksey Smirnov (GMES) was named one of the American Geophysical Union’s Outstanding Reviewers of 2019. Smirnov was cited for his service to Geophysical Research Letters.

In 2019, AGU received over 16,700 submissions and published over 7,000. AGU is working to highlight the valuable role of reviewers through events (though they may be virtual) at the Fall Meeting and other meetings.

NASA Funding for Simon Carn on Volcanic Emissions Project

Simon Carn
Simon Carn

Simon Carn (GMES/EPSSI) is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $117,411 research and development grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The project is titled “Multi-Decadel Trends in Volcanic Emissions: Extending the Aura Record into the Past and Future”. This is a potential three-year project totaling $375,789.

Simon Carn on the Spectacular Raikoke Image

Raikoke Volcano aerial view.
Raikoke via NASA

Simon Carn (GMES) was quoted in the story “NASA asked the public to choose its all-time best photos of Earth. Here are 17 of them,” in UPWorthy.

An unexpected series of blasts from a remote volcano in the Kuril Islands sent ash and volcanic gases streaming high over the North Pacific Ocean.

“What a spectacular image. It reminds me of the classic Sarychev Peak astronaut photograph of an eruption in the Kuriles from about ten years ago,” said Simon Carn, a volcanologist at Michigan Tech. “The ring of white puffy clouds at the base of the column might be a sign of ambient air being drawn into the column and the condensation of water vapor. Or it could be a rising plume from interaction between magma and seawater because Raikoke is a small island and flows likely entered the water.”

Read more at Upworthy, by Tod Perry.

Aleksey Smirnov Publishes on Plate Tectonics

Earth boundary with Sun, atmosphere, and subterranean features.

Aleksey Smirnov (GMES) is a co-author on the paper “Paleomagnetic evidence for modern-like plate motion velocities at 3.2 Ga” published in Science Advances on April 22, 2020. This collaborative study (with Harvard University and Yale University) demonstrates that the drifting of tectonic plates (plate tectonics) may have started at least 3.2 billion years ago, earlier than previously thought.

Extract

When plate tectonics began

This process may have been underway over 3.2 billion years ago.

Plate tectonics has been the dominant surface geodynamical regime throughout Earth’s recent geological history. One defining feature of modern plate tectonics is the differential horizontal motion of rigid lithospheric plates

The mode and rates of tectonic processes and lithospheric growth during the Archean [4.0 to 2.5 billion years (Ga) ago] are subjects of considerable debate. Paleomagnetism may contribute to the discussion by quantifying past plate velocities.

While plate tectonics have characterized Earth’s geodynamics in recent geologic time, it is unknown whether long-range horizontal motion of lithospheric plates occurred before ~2.7 Ga. Resolving this uncertainty would fundamentally contribute to understanding the formation settings of Earth’s earliest crust and nascent biosphere and the evolution of geodynamics in terrestrial planets in general.

Citation

Paleomagnetic evidence for modern-like plate motion velocities at 3.2 Ga
BY ALEC R. BRENNER, ROGER R. FU, DAVID A.D. EVANS, ALEKSEY V. SMIRNOV, RAISA TRUBKO, IAN R. ROSE

Science Advances  22 Apr 2020:
Vol. 6, no. 17, eaaz8670
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz8670

Archean basalts from the Pilbara Craton, Western Australia record the oldest long-range lithospheric motion identified to date.

Ted Bornhorst on Finding Mineral Sodalite

Ted Bornhorst (GMES), executive director of the A.E. Seaman Mineral Museum was quoted in the story “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stone!” in Michigan Blue. The story involved fluorescent rocks, popularly known as Yooperlites.

To find the fluorescing stones, Erik Rintamaki recommends Lake Superior beaches anywhere “from Whitefish Point west.” Theodore Bornhorst suggests scouring the Keweenaw Peninsula shoreline from Copper Harbor to Ontonagon. Prime picking comes in early spring after winter ice picks up stones from deeper water and transports them to the beach.

Read more at Michigan Blue, by Leslie Mertz.

Earth MRI Project Funding for James DeGraff

James M. DeGraff
James M. DeGraff

James DeGraff (GMES/EPSSI) is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $83,995 research and development cooperative agreement with Western Michigan University. This project is titled, “Bedrock Map, Dickinson County Quadrangle and Portions of Quadrangles, Earth MRI Project (Carney Lake, Felch, Foster City, Vulcan, Waucedah, Faithorn, and Cunard, 7.5 Minute Quadrangles), Central UP Michigan.”

Aleksey Smirnov, (GMES/EPSSI) and Chad Deering (GMES/EPSSI) are Co-PI’s on this potential two-year project.