It has been an important quarter with honours for Anouk, Adrian and Nicky. Tim has had some important coverage on British TV for his archaeological work and we are also pleased that the undergraduate group has published their data from fieldwork on the Younger Giant Dyke Complex in Southern Greenland.
Honours
Anouk’s Nature Communications paper from 2020 has been identified by Nature group as one of their Earth Science highlight papers for 2021.
Adrian, Anouk and Nicky have been invited to be members of the Conference Scientific Committee for RawMat2021.
Publications
Hutchison W, Finch AA, Borst AM, Marks M, Upton BGJ, Stüeken EE & Boyce A (2021) Mantle sources and magma evolution in Europe’s largest rare earth element belt (Gardar Province, SW Greenland): new insights from sulfur isotopes Earth and Planetary Science Letters, in press.
Koopmans L, Webster RA, Changleng R, Mathieson LM, Murphy AJ, Finch AA, McCarthy W (2021) New insights into the Younger Giant Dyke Complex and Mafic Lamprophyres of the Gardar Province, South-west Greenland. Bulletin of the Geological Surveys of Denmark and Greenland, in press
Tim and Aayush are involved in a Special Publication of Geosciences – Application of Geoscience Methods in Landscape Archaeology.
Masters and PhD Studentship Opportunities
We are always interested in hearing from candidates who would like to complete studies of the mineralogy, petrography and petrogenesis of alkaline igneous rocks.
The University is also launching its Masters in Strategic Earth Resources to go alongside its very successful Masters in Geochemistry. Adrian and the research group contribute several aspects to the delivery and content of these programmes and frequently supervise Masters projects.
Presentations
Anouk has an invited talk at Goldschmidt 2021 in session 7g (Mineral-scale analysis and geochemistry in service of Economic Geology): Borst AM, Finch AA, Horsburgh NJ, Smith M, Geraki K (2021) “Mineralogical effects of alteration and weathering in peralkaline silicate-hosted REE-HFSE deposits”.
Adrian has been invited to give a presentation to the RawMat 2021 conference in Greece in September 2021. He is intending to talk about the hydrothermal alteration of mineralised zones.
Outreach
Tim Kinnaird and Aayush Srivastava have been involved in BBC documentaries evolving from their work on dating sediments in archaeological sites, notably Stonehenge. Their publication Pearson et al. (2021) has been timed to coincide with a major BBC documentary that was aired in the UK on the 12th February.
Dougie Vipond and BBC Landward joined Tim and colleagues Sarah Boyd and Richard Bates for a day’s filming at East Kincaple in February. The research will feature in a BBC Landward episode sometime after mid-April.
Grant Awards
Finch AA & Horsburgh NJ (2020) Smart Sorting for the Sustainable Production of Critical e-Tech Metals. EPSRC-Impact AA (£29.4k).
Kinnaird TC (2020) Building capacity for low-level environmental radioactivity measurements in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. St Andrews Restarting Research Funding Award (£18k).
Bates CR, Kinnaird TC et al. (2020) The Fife Sustainable Natural and Cultural Coastal Zone – a blueprint for the sustainability of communities & the protection of natural and cultural heritage. St Andrews Restarting Research Funding Award (£18k).
And Finally….
Congratulations to Aayush and Sneha who are now formally engaged!
Congratulations to Anouk who is leaving us to take up a post as a Professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium. The post is jointly with the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. She will be working on magmatic ore deposits (particularly critical metals such as Sn, W, Nb, Ta, REE, P) in the Great Lake Region of Central Africa. We’ve enjoyed having her as part of the research group and wish her all best wishes in her new post.
Professor Adrian Finch 