James Hickey is a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. A geophysicist and volcanologist by trade, his PhD project is focussed on attempting to place constraints on volcanic unrest using integrated geodetic modelling. The newly discovered submarine Tamu Massif (pictured below), approximately 1500 km east …[Read More]
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
The Cascades: A carbonate geochemist’s point of view
KT Cooper is a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. A carbonate geochemist by training, she is currently on a three-month secondment to Houston, Texas, USA working with Exxon Mobil. Recently, I was lucky enough to visit a fellow Bristol Earth Sciences PhD student in Vancouver, Washington for …[Read More]
Science snaps (2): Soufrière Saint Vincent
Soufrière Saint Vincent is youngest volcanic centre on the Caribbean island of St Vincent. A stratovolcano some 1,230m in height, La Soufrière has erupted five times in the last three hundred years, most notably in 1902 when 1,680 people were killed. The explosive volcanism here is the surface manifestation of the slow, westwards subduction of …[Read More]
Kenya’s rumbling volcanoes
In the Kenyan Rift, where volcanoes are numerous, satellite observations have identified ground deformation at a number of volcanic centers. Radar images reveal that shallow magma systems may be active under at least four of the volcanoes in Kenya, but whether the signals are driven by an influx of new magma remains to be determined. …[Read More]
PhD profile #6 – Sorcha McMahon
Sorcha McMahon – 3rd year PhD student “New insights into deep mantle melts and the carbonatite-meliliitite connection” 1) The Twitter challenge: Your PhD in 140 characters Investigating how strange igneous rocks called carbonatites may have formed, using both natural samples and high-pressure experiments
Conference diaries: The IAVCEI Scientific Assembly, 2013
With the undergraduates off on their holidays, summer sees a lot of large geology conferences take place. We’ll be using the Conference Diaries series to bring you the highs and lows of all things geology conference. Here, Mel Auker talks us through the IAVCEI Scientific Assembly…
Supervisor profile – Professor Mike Kendall
Professor Mike Kendall Professor in Earth Sciences School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol PhD (1992) “Contributions to the theory and modelling of seismic waves in anisotropic inhomogeneous media” Supervisor: Prof. C.J. Thomson 1) The Twitter challenge: Describe your PhD in 140 characters (if you can remember it) Developed theory and numerical methods to track seismic …[Read More]
Science snaps (1): Africa’s Ups and Downs
Each week we’ll be featuring our favourite ‘science snaps’ on the blog. These posts will showcase images, photos, films and figures that we encounter on a day-to-day basis, as well as things which we simply think are cool and should be gawped at. All of the contributors to Between a Rock work in various veins …[Read More]
Feeling blue: A lesson in perseverance
Mel Auker is a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol and is a regular contributor to Between a rock and hard place. In her own words, she’s an “applied mathematician bumbling my way through a geology PhD”. Here she provides us all with some Monday afternoon inspiration. Read …[Read More]
How to finish a PhD in three years*
Welcome to our blog! Between a Rock blog is a multi-author effort, comprising five (and counting) PhD students from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. We’re pretty excited to be welcomed into the EGU network and look forward to sharing our PhD journeys and science stories with you. To get a …[Read More]