Biography

Wenwei Liang is a first-year Ph.D. student working with Professor Sun Chenguang at the Jackson School of Geoscience at the University of Texas at Austin. His concentrations include high-temperature geochemistry, planetary geology, and experimental petrology. His current research focuses on accessing the role played by phosphorus in forming habitable planets. More specifically, how phosphorus is distributed across different layers of an exoplanet and whether or not the detected phosphorus species met the criteria for life emergence under their ambient environments.

Before joining UT Austin, Wenwei studied at Cornell University as a Master of Engineering student working with Professor Esteban Gazel. During that time, he utilized Raman Spectroscopy to measure the CO2 density within olivine-hosted fluid inclusions collected from Hawaiian rejuvenated shield volcanoes. He also utilized Electron Probe Micro-Analyzer to measure the major and minor elements of the olivine grains. Taking advantage of CO2’s high sensitivity to pressure and Olivine forsterite number’s high sensitivity to crystallization temperature, Wenwei was able to constrain the physical conditions of the magma chambers underneath Haleakala and Oahu, which are two Hawaiian volcanoes during their rejuvenated stage.

Wenwei is currently enrolled in Professor Miller’s GEO392F course which teaches the operational principles and applications of ICP-MS and LA-ICP-MS. This analytical method can measure elements with low concentrations (trace elements), which is ideal for phosphorus considering it’s usually present in trace amounts in terrestrial rocks. With the knowledge and skills learned from this course, Wenwei felt more prepared and ready for his research.

Besides the analytical skills mentioned previously, Wenwei is also highly familiar with data organization, processing, interpretation, and visualization using Excel, Python, ArcGIS, and QGIS.