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Jonny Wu was awarded a Freeport McMoRan on an Academic-Industry Mining (AIM) fellowship for Summer 2025. The fellowship will involve topics in copper exploration geoscience. AIM Fellowships are offered to faculty at accredited universities in priority disciplines as identified by Freeport. The fellowship is structured as a work-and-learn program to provide in-depth understanding of challenges…Continue Reading Freeport McMoRan Academic-Industry Mining AIM Fellowship on copper exploration

Our GEOS255 Historical Geology class visited the Grand Canyon in Northern Arizona to learn about Earth’s geologic history. We camped over the weekend, cooked and hiked together, and composed mnenomics to remember the sequence of Grand Canyon strata. The field trip was led by co-instructors Dr.Barbara Carrapa and Dr.Jonny Wu….Continue Reading Historical Geology class field trip to Grand Canyon

Congratulations to Chris Calvelage, who led a paper on “Effects of subduction history on true polar wander driven by perturbations of Earth’s inertial moment from mantle convection” that was accepted in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A. Co-authors are Lorenzo Colli, Jonny Wu, Yi-An Lin, Yingcai Zheng, and Moloud Rahimzadeh Bajgiran. Open Access…Continue Reading New paper on True Polar Wander and subduction history

Congratulations to undergraduate Erika Pérez Roque, who received a $3000 award from the George H. Davis Scholarship for summer research on cassiterite ore geochemistry and data science. Erika’s research is co-supervised by UA Faculty Marta Codeço and Jonny Wu….Continue Reading Erika Pérez Roque receives scholarship for cassiterite ore geochemistry and data science research

The Geodaze student-run research symposium was held at University of Arizona on Mar 27-29, 2025. Our group members presented the following topics: Parker Comisac (MS Student): “Unfolding the Alaska-eastern Aleutians slab and its implications for Kula-Pacific plate tectonic reconstructions” Will McCraine (MS Student): “Discoveries from a geologic traverse across a metamorphic core complex along Tanque Verde…Continue Reading Will, Parker, and Erika present research at UA Geodaze 2025

Welcome to Dr.Ed Clennett, who is conducting research on Pacific plate tectonics, critical minerals, and machine learning. Ed completed his PhD at UTexas Austin, USA, and worked on seismic tomography, geodynamics and plate kinematic modeling. Ed’s MS was completed at Oxford University, UK, where Ed developed a plate reconstruction of western North America and the…Continue Reading Welcome to Dr.Ed Clennett

Our new paper “Revealing the Cape Verde Hotspot Track Across the Great Lakes” is now published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The study was led by Aibing Li and Zhongmin Tao of University of Houston. Jonny Wu and Karen Fischer (Brown University) are co-authors. Links to some media coverage is below: LiveScience: “Scientists find…Continue Reading Media coverage on ancient hotspot revealed under Great Lakes

Our group has two presentations at AGU2024 (group members in bold): Rahimzadeh Bajgiran, M., Wu, J., Rezeau, H., Integrating Plate Tectonics and Machine Learning to Predict Undiscovered Porphyry Copper Deposits, AGU 2024, Washington DC, USA. Li, A., Tao, Z., Wu, J., Fischer, K., Revealing the Cape Verde Hotspot Track in North America from a High-Resolution Seismic Anisotropy Model, AGU…Continue Reading AGU2024 presentations at Washington DC

Congratulations to Moloud on a successful PhD defence today! Moloud’s thesis is entitled “Machine learning and plate tectonic analysis for mantle heterogeneity, paleoclimate, and critical minerals”. Her committee is formed by Jonny Wu (Arizona), Susan Beck (Arizona), Patricia Persaud (Arizona), and Lorenzo Colli (Modelway). Moloud’s thesis chapters are listed below: Ch. 1 – Assessing large-scale…Continue Reading Moloud Rahimzadeh Bajgiran successfully defends PhD on machine learning and plate tectonics

Jonny Wu and TA Eric Cicero led our University of Arizona Physical Geology students on a field trip to the Tucson Mountains to learn about volcanic processes and copper mineralization during the Laramide orogeny….Continue Reading Class field trip to Tucson Mountains