Winners of the Jackson School’s 15th Annual Student Research Symposium
February 11, 2026
The wide breadth of research that takes place at the Jackson School of Geosciences was on display at the school’s 15th annual student research symposium. Rock physics, paleontology, planetary science, energy geoscience, seismology, climate science and hydrology were just a few of the subjects explored by over 100 students in their research this year.
Participants ranged from high school students to Ph.D. candidates. See below for the list of winners, what they studied, and insight from each of the first-place winners at the Jackson School. The event was organized by students and sponsored Chevron, Sandia National Labs and Shell.
Ph.D. Candidates
— Alex Janelle, 1st Place winner
1st Place: Alexander Janelle, “Regionally extensive mineral-solution reactions in karst: Insights from modern cave monitoring and seasonal trace element variations during the last deglacial”
2nd Place: Isabelle Lambert, “Insights into Fault Roughness over the Seismic Cycle of Laboratory Earthquakes”
3rd Place: Mohammed Abu Alreesh, “Geochemical Controls and Hydrogen Loss in Subsurface Storage: Evidence from Autoclave Experiments”
Honorable Mention: Harsh Kamath, “Thermal Comfort Path Planning for Urban Mobility in Austin, Texas”
Master’s and Ph.D. Aspirants
— Zach Hartnett, 1st Place winner
1st Place: Zach Hartnett, “Leveraging Depleted Oil & Gas Reservoirs for Subsurface Methane Storage: An Integrated Geologic, Engineering, and Economic Evaluation for Data Center Energy Supply”
2nd Place: Paola Salas Rivera, “Megaquartz and detrital mica pin down the origin of lacustrine dolostone and gypsum associated with the Moab, Utah salt wall”
3rd Place: Holiday O’Bryan, “Relevant or Redundant: Evaluating the Disbandment of the U.S. Bureau of Mines”
Undergraduate Students
— Hessa Patwa, 1st Place winner
1st Place: Hessa Patwa, “Tracking Rare Earth Element Concentrations in San Francisco Bay Depositional Environments”
2nd Place: Camila van der Maal, “Interpreting Depositional History from the Petrophysical and Sedimentological Characteristics of Ooze Deposits in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico”
3rd Place: E.M. Shank, “Evaluating the relationship between tree size and drought sensitivity across a storage capacity gradient”
High School Students
1st Place: Sierra Mickler, “Radiometric Dating and Geochemistry to Explore the Possibility of Pannotia”
2nd Place: Kareem Elseifi, “A Hybrid Data-Driven Framework for Seasonal Prediction of Accumulated Cyclone Energy along the U.S. Gulf Coast”
3rd Place: Lela Thornhill, “The Pursuit of Earthquake Precursors Through the Lens of ECoR (Energy Controlled Rotary Shear Apparatus)”
You can find more photos from the event in this Facebook album.