I am a high-temperature geochemist and petrologist who uses major and trace element abundance data and radiogenic isotopic signatures (Sr-Nd-Pb-Hf-He-Os) of volcanic rocks to study the evolution of the asthenosphere and lithosphere over geologic time. Most of my work centers on the development of volcanic and plutonic bodies that form in extensional and plume-related environments in the East African Rift, Iceland and the circum-Mediterranean (Turkey, Saudi Arabia). I earned my Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after completing a BSE in civil engineering from Princeton University and a Fulbright to the University of Iceland. Prior to coming to Penn State, I was an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and was the founding director of the UVa Branch of the Virginia Museum of Natural History.

I am a structural geologist who uses field and microstructural observations to study processes occurring along active convergent plate boundaries.  This work, mostly funded by the National Science Foundation, has taken my students and I to subduction zones around the world including Sumatra, Costa Rica/Panama, Alaska, Japan, Taiwan, and New Zealand.  My work is multidisciplinary and has led to collaborations at Penn State that address a range of problems related to subduction such as the mass balance and active uplift rates in the forearc, the impacts of seamounts and ridges on subduction, the significance of fracture patterns and veining, and the causes for systematic cleavage patterns in collisional mountain-belts.  Most recently, I have been conducting studies in Japan and Kodiak, Alaska on rocks that were deformed along the subduction interface at depths of seismogenesis to understand the processes that lead to different slip behaviors including Great Earthquakes.  I also have a project with Roman DiBiase studying the impact of mountain-building processes in the active collision in Taiwan on the patterns of rock strength and how these patterns influence surface processes. 

My research focuses on quantifying the mechanisms of erosion and sediment transport responsible for shaping Earth’s surface and applying this insight to problems ranging from post-wildfire erosion to landscape evolution. I am motivated by the challenge to develop surface process models that satisfy both modern observations and longer-term geologic constraints. Such a mechanistic approach is necessary to better predict landscape response to changing climate and land use conditions, mitigate natural hazards, and understand the dynamic interactions between surface and deep Earth processes. We investigate these problems using fieldwork, topographic and photogrammetric analysis, cosmogenic radionuclides, and modeling.