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This the place
where I have the opportunity to embarass all of the people with whom
I have worked!
Your picture
will soon appear here (especially if someone donates a jpeg)!
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| This is the boss of the Crystallography Lab! Prof.
Nancy Ross consuming a well-earned beer. A small prize is offered
for the first person to e-mail me
with the correct identification of exactly where this photograph
was taken. (Hr. Prof. und Frau O'Brien are not allowed to compete,
so the rest of you have a chance). |
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Tiziana Boffa Ballaran (on the left) is the now the staff
crystallographer at the Bayerisches
Geoinstitut in Bayreuth. We first worked together on the high-pressure
phase transitions in amphiboles (see European Journal of Mineralogy
12:1195-1213). We are now collaborating on determining the high-pressure
behaviour of the mineral lawsonite which plays an important role
in water transport in subducting slabs, and on the controls on
phase transitions in clinopyroxenes.
Jennifer Kung (on the right) is currently a post-doc at Stony
Brook in New York. We have collaborated on determining the equations
of state of materials by combining measurements of density by
X-ray diffraction with measurements of elasticity by ultrasonic
interferometry (see Physics & Chemistry of Minerals, 28:35-43).
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When I was working in Bayreuth I was fortunate to have several
talented post-docs working with me on various projects in high-pressure
crystallography.
One was Ronald Miletich, currently at ETH
Zurich. With David Allan (now a lecturer at the University of
Edinburgh) he built up the lab in Bayreuth, developed a new design
of diamond-anvil cell, and investigated
the high-pressure behaviour of a number of transition-metal compounds.
Now we are collaborating on studying elastic softening at high-pressure
phase transitions by single-crystal diffraction.
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Just to prove that while crystallographers sometimes go on
field trips, petrologists sometimes do diffraction. This is Prof.
Dr. Priv Doz Alan Woodland, pictured in complete control of the
high-pressure beamline at the ESRF (European synchrotron) in Grenoble.
I have published more papers with Alan than anyone else, mostly
on systems in which cation order/disorder plays a major role in
determining the phase equilibria. Our biggest discovery (so far)
was that all of the Mg in wadsleyite can be completely substituted
by Fe (see American Mineralogist, 83:404-408).
Alan has just taken up a Professorship in the Mineralogical
Institute in Frankfurt.
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Alan's work on the fayalite-magnetite (Contributions to Mineralogy
and Petrology, 139:734-747) raised questions about possible incorporation
of Fe3+ into wadsleyite and the possibility of redox melting in
the Earth's transition zone.
These questions are being pursued by Alan's PhD student, Mario
Koch, who has continued to work at the Mineralogisches Institut
in Heidelberg while Alan and I have moved on.
Mario is a "converted" field geologist (look at
his web
site if you don't believe me).
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