I owe this award to the wonderful foundation in geoscience I received as an undergraduate at Pasadena City College and Cal State Northridge, and as a Ph.D. student at University of Southern California (USC). I am especially grateful for the mentorship I received from my Ph.D. Advisor, John Platt, and my committee members Thorsten Becker, Greg Davis, Ken Hudnut, and Tom Hanks.
After graduating from USC, I spent one of the most productive years of my career as a postdoc at Brown University, where I benefited immensely from interacting with many people, but especially Greg Hirth and his research group, Terry Tullis, and Karen Fischer.
Since arriving at University of Texas at Austin in 2012, I’ve been very fortunate to connect with some exceptional faculty, postdocs, and students. I’d especially like to thank Mark Cloos for his mentorship, and for sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of a range of geoscience topics, Mark Helper for his collaborative spirit and for lending me and my students his exceptional skills in field geology, and Doug Smith for his petrological prowess and shared interest in all things microscopic.
Last but not least, I would have gotten nowhere without the support of my entire family, including my parents, my siblings, my partner Melissa, and our son Teddy.
Thank you again to AGU for this honor.