Events

Bureau of Economic Geology Seminar Series

Jackson School 20th Anniversary Celebration and Reunion

Come celebrate the Jackson School’s amazing journey to becoming one of the preeminent geosciences institutions in the world!

We hope you’ll join us for this special milestone as we reflect on two decades of achievements and look ahead to the future of the Jackson School. A fantastic lineup of events is planned, offering opportunities to reconnect with former students, colleagues, and friends, engage in discussions about the school’s impact, and celebrate the incredible Jackson School community.

Visit the event page to register.

DeFord Lecture | Dr. Zhe Jia

Earthquake Source Complexities: Insights on Rupture Dynamics and Hazard Mitigation by Dr. Zhe Jia, research assistant professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics at the Jackson School of Geosciences

Abstract: Effectively assessing and reducing earthquake risks requires understanding why earthquakes can unfold in ways that standard seismic models often fail to predict. This talk explores how fault ruptures can be more complex than our usual assumptions suggest, making earthquake magnitudes and impacts especially hard to forecast. In this talk, I highlight some representative major earthquakes in recent years to illustrate the complexity of seismic ruptures. By integrating new modeling methods with multiple geophysical data and lenses, we can quantify their detailed rupture complexities, examine the compositional and thermal conditions of their source regions, and dynamically reproduce their faulting processes to uncover underlying physics and controlling factors. These advances provide insights into Earth’s multi-scale dynamics and highlight the value of unifying views from data-driven and physics-based models. By systematically exploring rupture complexities, we take steps toward closing the gap between theoretical and observational understanding of earthquake physics, thereby improving earthquake forecasts and hazard mitigation.

Jackson School 20th Anniversary Celebration and Reunion

Come celebrate the Jackson School’s amazing journey to becoming one of the preeminent geosciences institutions in the world!

We hope you’ll join us for this special milestone as we reflect on two decades of achievements and look ahead to the future of the Jackson School. A fantastic lineup of events is planned, offering opportunities to reconnect with former students, colleagues, and friends, engage in discussions about the school’s impact, and celebrate the incredible Jackson School community.

Visit the event page to register.

UTIG Seminar Series: Sara Santos, UTIG

Speaker: Sara Oliveira Santos, University of Texas Institute for Geophysics

Host: Krista Soderlund

Title: Shrimp as a model organism for bio-inspired underwater vehicles

Abstract: Metachronal locomotion, characterized by the sequential beating of appendages moving in a tail-to-head motion with a phase lag, is present across a wide range of length scales and Reynolds numbers (Re). During the power stroke, the swimming appendages move opposite the swimming direction, maximizing their surface area to generate drag-based thrust in each pleopod. During the recovery stroke, the profile area decreases, reducing the drag on the appendages and creating net thrust. Metachronal, drag-based swimming in shrimp has been studied to understand its ecological significance and find solutions for underwater propulsion. However, we have yet to explore many important mechanisms of shrimp swimming, especially at the single appendage scale. We investigate the individual characteristics of their kinematics and morphology to understand the methods of success in shrimp swimming. We designed and built a fully articulated, multi-link robotic platform, integrating the kinematics of shrimp pleopods. Its modular design allows for integrating morphological features to test any particular parameter of interest and is suitable for studying multi-legged systems. Using experimental techniques, we use our robotic platform to investigate the hydrodynamics of a single beating appendage’s near- and far-field flow. We performed concurrent kinematics, force, and velocimetry measurements to examine the generation of drag-based thrust and lift, and the formation of vortices around one propulsor. We found that shrimp produce lift through a leading-edge vortex during the power stroke by taking advantage of the angle of incidence of their exopodite. Insights from our robotic platform can provide design guidelines for bio-inspired underwater uncrewed robots, contribute to understanding the evolutionary history of metachronal swimmers, and establish a link between their adaptations and the ecosystem.

Jackson School 20th Anniversary Celebration and Reunion

Come celebrate the Jackson School’s amazing journey to becoming one of the preeminent geosciences institutions in the world!

We hope you’ll join us for this special milestone as we reflect on two decades of achievements and look ahead to the future of the Jackson School. A fantastic lineup of events is planned, offering opportunities to reconnect with former students, colleagues, and friends, engage in discussions about the school’s impact, and celebrate the incredible Jackson School community.

Visit the event page to register.

Bureau of Economic Geology Seminar Series

DeFord Lecture | Dr. Mike Ek

UTIG Seminar Series: Molly Patterson, SUNY Binghamton

Speaker: Molly Patterson, SUNY Binghamton

Host: Chris Lowery

Title: Catchment sensitivities of the west and east Antarctic ice sheets to orbital forcing during the mid- to late Pliocene

Abstract: The Antarctic ice sheet appears as a large, massive homogenous blob on most maps, yet some computer models predict there is considerable variability with respect to how the ice sheet may change under various warming scenarios due to different Earth systems processes. Sediment records recovered from the ice margin during ocean drilling expeditions associated with the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and its predecessor programs can help provide some insight on the causes of Antarctic ice sheet variability. Such insight is fundamental towards understanding some of the sensitivities of how the ice sheet might respond to future climate change.

Geochemical records from the deep, which reflect past changes in ice volume and global temperature, demonstrate clear oscillations in ice volume that were paced by astronomical variations. Such astronomical variations involve eccentricity (the shape of Earth’s orbit, ~400 and 100 thousand year cycles, kyr), obliquity (tilt of Earth’s axis, ~41 kyr), and precession (wobble of Earth’s axis, ~20 kyr) cycles. While geological records recovered from the Antarctic margin also demonstrate this, the exact mechanisms for how orbital forcing impacts ice sheet mass balance, including regional sensitivities of ice sheets to marine and terrestrial climate feedbacks, remain elusive. I will present two high-resolution mid-Pliocene to Early Pleistocene (~3.3 to 2.3 Ma) records of iceberg-rafted debris recovered from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Ross Sea margin and the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) Wilkes Land margin collected during IODP Expeditions 374 and 318, respectively. These results suggest that different sectors of marine-based margins of Antarctica’s ice sheets have different sensitivities to various climate and oceanic feedbacks resulting from astronomical variations. Our findings ground-truth computer modeling experiments that highlight large spatial variability in the response of Antarctica’s ice sheet to future warming, and that sensitivities of the ice sheet to atmospheric and marine forcing differ in each catchment.

Bureau of Economic Geology Seminar Series

DeFord Lecture | Dr. Charlie Kerans

UTIG Seminar Series: Allie Balter-Kennedy, Tufts University

Speaker: Alexandra (Allie) Balter-Kennedy, Tufts University

Host: Benjamin Keisling

Research Theme: Polar

Master's Thesis Presentations

The Master of Science (MS) degree at the Jackson School of Geosciences is considered to be the professional degree for a career in the Geosciences. This degree is the foundation for students pursuing employment in the petroleum industry, environmental and hydrogeological fields, state and federal government agencies, and other related geoscience fields. Some students also use the MS degree as preparation for pursuing a Ph.D.

The Energy & Earth Resources Interdisciplinary program provides the opportunity for students to prepare themselves in management, finance, economics, law and policy leading to analytical and leadership positions in resource-related fields. The private sector and government organizations face a growing need for professionals that can plan, evaluate, and manage complex resource projects, commonly international in scope, which often include partners with a variety of professional backgrounds.

As requirements for these degrees, students must present a professional talk on Master’s Thesis Presentations.

Bureau of Economic Geology Seminar Series

DeFord Lecture | Dr. Karen McKinnon

UTIG Seminar Series: Jud Partin, UTIG

Speaker: Jud Partin, University of Texas Institute for Geophysics

Host: TBD

Research Theme: Climate

Bureau of Economic Geology Seminar Series