News and Events

The University of Utah's Mine Rescue Team demonstrates the value of safety. The importance of safety is difficult to state when things are going well. You’re never going to read a news story about the life that wasn’t lost in an accident, or read a statistic about all the disasters that were passively averted. When things are going well safety measures feel downright mundane, but that’s exactly why they are so important to highlight and celebrate. It means they are working, that tragic stories are being averted and lives are being preserved.

One of the outstanding field geologists of the modern day, Jay Quade has provided great insight into the geochemistry of the near-surface (surficial) environment. His Ph.D. work set the stage to document isotope diffusion as the determining factor in soil carbonate profiles. He followed this with work in the Siwaliks of Pakistan and showed that major ecosystem changes, including the expansion of C4 grasslands, are recorded in soils through both d13C and d18O isotopic analysis.

Friends, classmates, scientists, biologists, congratulations on blazing your trail through your undergraduate degrees! No matter how long it took you to get here or what path you took, this is the culmination of all your hard work … but this is not the end of your education, or at least I hope it isn’t, and I don’t mean whatever post-graduate programs you might be attending after we toss our caps. I hope you continue to learn and challenge yourselves long into the future.

At 43, King is not your typical graduate student. He’s worked in oil fields and mines, taught high school science, flipped houses, run a rental business, and even planned a year-long move to Spain. Now, he’s a student in the first-ever cohort of a master’s program at the University of Utah focused on mining safety. The interdisciplinary program is a collaboration between the U’s Department of Mining Engineering at the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.

Beneath Yellowstone lies a magma reservoir, pulsing with molten and superheated rock and exsolved gases. Scientists have long known about the chamber’s existence, but they have yet to precisely locate its uppermost boundary and characterize the contents of the chamber closest to the surface—information crucial for understanding the potential perils this volcanic feature poses.