Dear alumni and friends,
As I look back on another challenging year for the department, college and University, I want to convey my sincere thanks and appreciation to our dedicated faculty, staff, and students, as well as to our ever-supportive alumni and friends, for keeping our programs strong and moving the department forward in positive directions. In this newsletter, we profile several students (p. 4), pay tribute to Al Guber, highlight a number of exciting education, research, and diversity and inclusion activities in the department (p. 12), and celebrate the accomplishments of many faculty and students who received awards (p. 27).
This past year we have made notable progress on many fronts as we recover from the pandemic, including the recruitment of students into our undergraduate and graduate programs, getting our lab and field research back on track, completing the renovation of labs in the basement of Deike, planning for another phase of major renovation involving the first, second, and fifth floors of Deike, and hiring several faculty. By the end of this academic year, we will have welcomed six new professors to our faculty, Ben Cardenas (sedimentology), Chloe Gustafson (hydrogeology, geophysics), Antonia Hadijmichael (data analytics, water and risk), Tushar Mittal (geomechanics, planetary science), Anastasia Piliouras (sedimentology), and Josimar da Silva (rock mechanics, geophysics). And in 2023, Isabel Fendley (geochemistry) will be joining the faculty.
I would like to take this opportunity to highlight two additional significant achievements from this past year. In February, we added a new program in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to the department to complement our undergraduate and graduate programs and bring greater focus to our efforts to improve the climate in and representation of the department. Associate Pofessor Liz Hajek, the inaugural associate head for DEI, is leading a dedicated committee of faculty, staff, postdocs, and students to develop new programs and activities encompassing all aspects of the department (p. 12).
In response to the growing importance of data analytics and visualization in the geosciences, several faculty (Sridhar Anandakrishnan, Tim Bralower, Chris Blaszczak-Boxe, Brian Kelley, Max Lloyd) teamed up to develop a new undergraduate class (Geosc 210; Geoscience Data Analytics) to improve students’ data skills and prepare them for advanced course work involving the analysis and modeling of large geoenvironmental data sets. This fall, Assistant Professors Brian Kelley and Max Lloyd have been teaching the course for the first time using a python-based coding platform and a variety of datasets to provide students experience with a range of data types and processing methods.
In closing, I would like to thank again everyone for the incredible support provided to the department this past year, and I look forward to hopefully seeing many of you in person in the coming year.
Sincerely yours,
Andrew Nyblade