2019 Topic: Before it Blows: The Science behind Volcanic Eruptions
2018 Topic: Investigating Earth’s Interior with Magma Chemistry
Biography:
Kristina Walowski is an Assistant Professor of Geology and has been teaching at Middlebury College since January of this year (2017). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon where she researched volcanism in the Pacific Northwest. After completing her doctorate degree in 2015, she spent 18 months as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where she studied the cycling of water in Earth’s interior utilizing a global sample suite of ocean-island basalts (e.g., Hawaii, St. Helena, and the Canary Islands). Her recent publications include “Slab melting beneath the Cascade Arc driven by dehydration of altered oceanic peridotites” published in Nature Geoscience (2015), and “Slab melting and magma formation in the Cascade Arc” published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters (2016). The results of this work are well-summarized by the website Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/04/magma-beneath-the-cascade-volcanoes-might-be-special-blend/.
Since arriving at Middlebury, Kristina has taught classes in Petrology and Natural Hazards. At present, she is teaching a course titled “The Bedrock Geology of Vermont.” For her research, she utilizes the chemistry of minerals (specifically, olivine and pyroxene) and melt inclusions (tiny blobs of magma trapped in minerals) to study a variety of volcanic and magmatic processes. Such processes include magma storage and evolution, volcanic eruption dynamics, and the cycling of elements through Earth’s interior.