Fracking for natural gas in parts of Pennsylvania with a legacy of energy extraction may increase the risk of groundwater contamination, according to a team led by Penn State scientists.
Office Address
236 Dieke Building
Faculty Adviser(s)
Katherine Freeman/Christopher House
Juliana Drozd
Title
Ph.D. Candidate
Research Interests
Organic Geochemistry, Astrobiology, Deep Tme, and Position-Specific Isotope Analysis
Amy Best
Title
Administrative Support Coordinator 5
Rachel Housego
Title
Assistant Professor of Geosciences
Research
My research program focuses on studying how water moves in the subsurface. Groundwater provides an essential freshwater resource for communities, agriculture and industry, and supports the health of the ecohydrological system. I study the interactions between surface water forcings (e.g. waves, currents, tides, surge), climate forcings, morphological evolution, and groundwater dynamics which act on a broad range of spatial and temporal scales throughout the hydrosphere. Understanding these feedbacks and mechanisms is essential for predicting water resource availability and environmental hazards such as flooding, erosion and pollutant transport. I use both in situ field measurements (surface water, groundwater, atmospheric and geotechnical) and numerical models simulating groundwater flow and transport (MODFLOW, HydroGeoSphere) to evaluate these processes in complex environments from the mountains to the coasts.
Seventeen Penn State graduate students including two from Geoscience have received 2022 NASA Pennsylvania Space Grant awards and been named graduate fellows.
Xiwei Guo
Title
Postdoctoral Scholar
Kimberly Lau, assistant professor in Penn State’s Department of Geosciences and an associate in the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, was recently selected to receive a 2023 Sloan Research Fellowship. Awarded since 1955 to the brightest young scientists across the United States and Canada, the two-year Sloan Fellowships are one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career researchers.
Rebecca Bussard
Title
Postdoctoral Scholar
Christopher House will serve as director of the Consortium for Planetary and Exoplanetary Sciences and Technology, effective July 1. House succeeds James Kasting, the consortium’s inaugural director, who is retiring after nearly 35 years at Penn State.
Jesse Reimink will use the Faculty Early Career Development Program from the National Science Foundation to shed light on how the Earth’s continents took shape between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago