The shape of volcanoes and their craters provide critical information on their formation and eruptive history. Techniques applied to photographs — photogrammetry — show promise and utility in correlating shape change to volcanic background and eruption activity.
Changes in volcano shape — morphology — that occur with major eruptions are quantifiable, but background volcanic activity, manifesting as small volume explosions and crater wall collapse, can also cause changes in morphology and are not well quantified.
Energetic barely begins to describe geosciences alumna Ashlee Dere.
Randy Cygan is a Centennial Fellow of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and he served as a member of the department’s advisory board from 2012 to 2019. He has been a valued alumni mentor to our undergraduate students seeking career guidance. Cygan received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in geology in 1977 from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He first caught the geology bug during his high school years by traveling with family and friends throughout the Midwest, but it grew into a serious avocation during a lab assistantship with Gus Koster van Groos at UIC. Cygan’s exposure to the high-pressure synthesis of minerals led him to graduate studies at the world’s center for experimental petrology. At Penn State he earned his master’s degree in 1980 followed by a doctorate in 1983, both in geochemistry and mineralogy.