It is a great honour to become the President of the European Association of Geochemistry (EAG). I have just taken over from Sigurdur Gislason – “Siggi” – who has led EAG so brilliantly during his two years as President. As Siggi noted in this same piece two years ago, the governing structure of EAG, whereby […]
We are living in an exciting period of time: samples from asteroids, the Moon, Mars, and hopefully comets are or will be returned to laboratories on Earth within the next one or two decades. These new materials will give us unpreceded views of the origin of the solar system and of processes that led to […]
THE WORK There are significant numbers of highly-educated, well-trained, talented and hardworking people in geochemistry and wider Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) fields around the globe, and over recent decades we have witnessed significant increases in the annual number of new PhDs. To best serve excellence among all and within every sector, diverse careers […]
Rosy Finlayson, Ayabonga Mtsotso and Nomvo Kasolo The water crisis Cape Town experienced one of its worst droughts on record from 2015 to 2018, culminating in a threat to cut off municipal water supply to over 4 million people (nicknamed “Day-Zero”). To avoid this, the City of Cape Town (CoCT) implemented extreme water restrictions. This […]
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known” Carl Sagan (1934-1996), Astronomer and Science Communicator. We can ask of this quote, but by who? We may consider academia as a rousing type of workplace offering freedom to think and conduct research that can promise major new discoveries while educating and training the next generation of […]
My students often ask me how I learnt to make nice images and graphs for papers, cool diagrams, videos or programs. “What software do you use?” — is the typical question. So here goes some facts about my personal experiences to show the benefits of autodidacticism and hobbies… and how these can influence your future. […]
Field work is a key part of training for many geological careers. From locating and describing new deposits to excavating rocks and fossils, to identifying structural relationships between different geological units, fieldwork is essential for geologists to gain a better understanding and appreciation of the geological problems they are studying. But what about for geochemists, […]
In this new series on the EAG blogosphere, geochemists from around the world have been telling us about their experiences during this difficult period of the COVID-19 pandemic: how it has affected their academic and research activities, and how they have been adjusting to new ways of life. In the posts below, James Bradley, and Jon […]
In this new series on the EAG blogosphere, geochemists from around the world tell us about their experiences during this difficult period of the COVID-19 pandemic: how it has affected their academic and research activities, and how they have been adjusting to new ways of life. In the first two posts below, Rosalie Tostevin in South […]
Last month in ‘Lab Corner’, we featured some tips and tricks for repurposing everyday items for the lab and field. In this next contribution, geomicrobiologists from the University of Oklahoma put together an ingenious gadget for homogenizing biological samples, and a glaciologist from Cardiff University repurposes a climbing frame for fieldwork in Greenland. The field […]
