Astrid Holzheid joins Washington University as the Clark Way Harrison Visiting Professor, Fall 2019*
Astrid Holzheid, Institute of Geosciences, Kiel University, Germany, is a regular annual visitor at the Planetary Chemistry Laboratory run by Professor Bruce Fegley, Jr. and Dr. Katharina Lodders since more than a decade. She visited the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, the first time in 1995 as visiting PhD Student.
Former studies include partitioning of moderately siderophile elements between coexisting silicate, sulfide and metal phases to shed light on differentiation processes of the early Earth.
Together with Dr. Katharina Lodders she derived activity coefficients of Cu in silicate melts as function of temperature, oxygen and sulfur fugacities to add knowledge on core formation on rocky planets. They also developed a sulfur fugacity barometer by using iron sulfide stoichiometry to calculate sulfur fugacity during experiments.
Ongoing research is about K and Cu isotopic fractionation during vaporization to understand how vaporization from magma ocean can affect isotopic fractionation. This research is joint work with Professor Bruce Fegley, Jr., Dr. Katharina Lodders, and Prof. Kun Wang and his group of the Isotope Cosmochemistry Laboratory.
*Holzheid is the Clark Way Harrison Visiting Professor and will be teaching Environmental Mineralogy for one semester in Fall 2019, EPSc 430. Course description: Key principles of experimental geosciences with an overview of experimental apparatus and analytical devices used for experimental environmental geoscience; Case studies will cover (1) rock-mineral-fluid interactions due to use of the geological subsurface for thermal, electrical or material energy storage, (2) mineral-forming processes at near-surface conditions, e.g., in the oxidation zones of sulfide ore deposits and during weathering of technological waste, (3) applied geosciences, and (4) tailored geomaterials. Prereq: EPSc 352 or permission of instructor.
