The University of British Columbia

I am an igneous petrologist interested in unraveling age and provenance of magmatic rocks as well as processes that give rise to their great diveristy in both Phanerozoic continental arcs and Archean cratons. To this end I use a range of geochemical and radiometric tools applied at both the whole-rock and single mineral scale. I developed a passion for geochemistry during my MSc study in the Sifton Range of the southern Yukon. My PhD work took me to the high Andes where I quantitatively surveyed intrusive rocks along an 1,800 km-transect of the Peruvian Eastern Cordillera using a range of laboratory and analytical techniques that include various modalities of mass spectrometry, in situ U-Pb dating of zircons, electron and ion microprobes. In 2008, I was awarded the Swiss National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology and experiment on high pressure (≥3GPa) and temperature hydrous-phase equilibria and water storage in deep planetary interiors. Most recently, I served as the diamond geologist with Canadian Federal Governement in Yellowknife where I studied kimberlitic occurrences and their constituent mantle xenoliths as probes of the Canadian lithospheric mantle. Studies mantle record was complemented by fingerprinting crustal growth of the Slave craton via the combined use of U-Pb and Hf-O isotope systematics in detrital zircons.