Dr. Joseph Gonzalez has recently been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Earth Sciences Post-doctoral Fellowship to support his research at the Università degli Studi di Pavia. This award made through the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) will support Dr. Gonzalez’s research for two years in Prof. Matteo Alvaro’s “Fiorenzo Mazzi” Experimental Mineralogy Lab of the Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e dell’Ambiente. This research aims to use tiny mineral inclusions, such as quartz (SiO2), trapped within >4 billion year old zircon (ZrSiO4) crystals to determine their depth of crystallization. By determining their depth of crystallization we can get insight into their crystallization environment >4 billion years ago.
Further details at NSF webpage