<![CDATA[EPIC - News]]>Thu, 09 Oct 2025 18:43:24 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Long overdue update!]]>Mon, 14 Sep 2020 18:37:16 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/long-overdue-updateA crazy and busy year has come and gone since I last updated the website and the EPIC lab news page!  

Amidst weathering the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as racial, economic, and climate crises in the US, we've managed to find some solace in doing some science. Perhaps the biggest news is that EPIC graduate students Meghan Guild (PhD), Kara Brugman (PhD), Hannah Shamloo (PhD) and Mitch Phillips (MS) have all graduated this past year!!! Definitely a heroic effort in these times! We're going to miss them desperately but are so excited for all the wonderful things they are off to next and the bright futures that await them!  You can also read a nice profile on Meghan, Hannah and Kara when they graduated from ASU here: https://asunow.asu.edu/20200428-‘epic’-team-scientists-graduates-asu. Also a big congrats to a number of EPIC second project students who had big wins this year as well; Alicia Johnson and Chad Ostrander for defending their PhD's, and Srinidhi Ravi, Mara Karageozian, and Samantha Jacobs for passing their qualifying exams! 

We've had a slew of new papers come out too, covering topics from Yellowstone to arc magmas and more which you can check out here.  Current EPIC PhD students Felix Ishimwe and Jessie Bersson have been hard at work learning about the history of volcanism in Colombia and the frequency of magma recharge at Mt. St. Helens, respectively. Both of them will be presenting their new work at the virtual AGU 2020, so look for their presentations there. And EPIC undergraduate researcher Jax Webb is busy working on querying characteristics of past dome-forming eruptions in an effort to improve eruption forecasting.  Impressive all while working from home!

Other good news is that I secured tenure at ASU this summer and also stepped into the role of Associate Director for an Inclusive Community with the School of Earth & Space Exploration, to work on promoting equity within our unit's systems and processes. As part of this I am leading SESE's SESE Justice-Equity-Diversity-Inclusion (JEDI) Task Force and a graduate class on the same subject.

In addition, I contributed to this ASU Now piece answering your "burning questions about volcanoes," which may be a fun read for those less familiar with volcano science.

Sending our best to everyone out there as we take this unprecedented time, one day at a time,
Christy Till, EPIC Head Magma Maker (mostly from home these days)]]><![CDATA[Summer Activities, new papers & new lab members!]]>Wed, 07 Aug 2019 19:00:13 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/more-new-papersThere's a slew of new papers out of the EPIC lab this summer...

EPIC grad student Karalee Brugman & PI Christy Till's 2019, cpx-liquid geothermometer for silicic systems was officially published at American Mineralogist

EPIC grad student Hannah Shamloo & PI Christy Till's 2019 paper on the triggering mechanism for the Lava Creek Tuff super-eruption at Yellowstone was published at Contributions to Mineralogy & Petrology 

PI Christy Till and co-authors 2019 zircon geochronology & petrochronology paper on the magmatic system evolution in the aftermath of the Lava Creek Tuff super-eruption at Yellowstone is now available online at G-cubed.

....with even more to come soon!  

This summer many EPIC lab members were busy trying to wrap up MS & PhD projects and start writing postdoc proposals as they look toward graduation this Winter and Spring. We attended a variety of great conferences and workshops including the volcanology field school at Katmai volcano in Alaska, the 2019 CIDER on Volcanoes, the Solid Earth Gordon Conference and the Earth Educator's Rendezvous, and will be presenting at the upcoming Goldschmidt conference in Barcelona and the Geological Society of American meeting in Phoenix AZ in August and September. 

We were also excited to learn that a NSF FRES grant to work on the evolution of the Colombian arc and continental lithosphere from Miocene to present was funded this summer, after our preliminary work there supported by an Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute - ASU grant showed some promising and intriguing outcomes.  So stay tuned for a lot more about our work on volcanism in Colombia! 

​And last but certainly not least, the EPIC lab is especially excited to welcome two new grad students starting this Fall, Jessie Bersson and Felix Ishimwe! We're so excited to have them on board and for all the exciting science they will be doing with us.


]]><![CDATA[New EPIC lab papers]]>Thu, 04 Apr 2019 21:53:32 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/new-epic-lab-papersLots of new EPIC lab research rolling off the presses these days!

EPIC lab PhD candidate Kara Brugman & Christy Till's paper in American Mineralogist on a new clinopyroxene-liquid geothermometer is now available as a preprint here.

Christy Till and co-author's Nature Communications (open access) paper on causes of diversity in volcanic behavior in now available here.

EPIC lab alumni Kayla Iacovino & Christy Till's paper & code on a new density calculator for magmas is available here.

EPIC lab PhD candidate Hannah Shamloo & Christy Till's paper in Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology on the run up to Yellowstone's Lava Creek Tuff Eruption is in press, and will be available shortly.

Stay tuned for more coming soon!]]><![CDATA[School Year '17-'18 Wrap Up]]>Fri, 11 May 2018 23:27:20 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/school-year-17-18-wrap-upIt's been a great year with lots to celebrate as the school year comes to a close, some highlights include:
  • EPIC grad student H. Shamloo received a GSA grad student grant to continue her work on Mg diffusion in feldspar, which she will present on at Goldschmidt this summer, as well as an ASU College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Fellowship to support her research overall 
  • EPIC grad student M. Guild won the '17-'18 Outstanding TA award for her work TA'ing Petrology this year and presented her work on water-undersaturated mantle melts at the American Geophysical Union meeting
  • EPIC grad student K. Brugman was an early career participant in the AGU Chapman Conference on silicic magma at Laguna del Maule in Chile this January and helped co-author a Nature Geoscience News and Views article on the conference, in addition to presenting her new cpx-liquid geothermometer at the American Geophysical Union meeting
  • EPIC grad student M. Phillips attended the Tenerife International Volcano Monitoring workshop this March & presented his exoplanet research at the American Geophysical Union meeting
  • EPIC postdoc K. Iacovino was invited to give a keynote talk on her research on the oxygen fugacity of subduction zone fluids at the Goldschmidt conference, as well as appearing on the local news to help explain the on-going eruption in Hawaii
  • New York Time piece and subsequent media coverage of H. Shamloo and C. Till's work what lead to  Yellowstone's Lava Creek eruption this Fall (see Yellowstone page)
]]><![CDATA[Science News article discussing EPIC lab exoplanet research]]>Fri, 11 May 2018 23:24:44 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/science-news-article-discussing-epic-lab-exoplanet-researchNice article on exoplanet science out today that includes our work on making exoplanet mantle and magma compositions in the EPIC lab.  Read it here!]]><![CDATA[Science Paper out!]]>Thu, 15 Jun 2017 19:43:06 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/science-paper-out
School of Earth and Space Exploration assistant professor Christy Till, right, and research assistant professor Maitrayee Bose, left, stand with the NanoSIMS. This advanced mass sprectrometer was a key ingredient in the discovery because it lets scientists examine the elemental and isotopic composition of microscopic samples smaller than a human hair's thickness. Photo: Deanna Dent/ASUNow.
In collaboration with UC Davis Professor Kari Cooper, EPIC PI Christy Till and SESE collaborator Maitrayee Bose pioneer a new method to quantify the magmatic thermal histories prior to eruption in a Science paper out today.  The group used Li in zircon concentrations profiles to conduct diffusion chronometry on the same zircon grains used for U-Th dating, thereby determining the timing of thermal events in the magma in both absolute and relative time preceding the 0.7 ka Kaharoa eruption, New Zealand.  The results are surprising.  The zircons spent more than 90% of their lifetime (10,000-100,000's of years) in an uneruptible, mostly crystalline, and deep magmatic reservoir.  Any thermal pulses the system saw lasted only years to centuries, much shorter than usually predicted.  These thermal pulses seem to have occurred in more rapid succession prior to the eruption.

More can be found:
]]><![CDATA[End of the '16-'17 School Year Wrap-Up]]>Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:43:49 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/end-of-the-16-17-school-year-wrap-upEPIC celebrated a lot at the end of the 2016-2017 school year, including:
  • Second Year EPIC grad student, Hannah Shamloo, passed her qualifying exam and advanced to candidacy! 
  • SESE undergraduate and EPIC undergraduate research assistant Mitchell Phillips graduated with honors with his BS in Geological Sciences and will be joining EPIC as a MS student starting in the Fall!
  • Third Year EPIC PhD student Karalee Brugman won a CLAS outstanding graduate award! 
  • Third Year EPIC PhD student Meghan Guild was chosen to participate in this year's CIDER summer program on subduction zones! 
  • EPIC Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Kayla Iacovino won the "Least Forgotten Postdoc" Award at our end of year celebration! 
  • Co-advised EPIC MS student Alexandra Perez gave her first talk at a conference on chondrules and knocked it out of the park!

Congrats to everyone for all their hard work this year!

We're looking forward to a summer packed with adventures including logging a lot of experimental and analytical time, field work at Medicine Lake and Mt. Shasta volcanoes in Northern California with our MIT collaborators, participating and teaching the CIDER summer program at UC Berkeley, giving four presentations at IAVCEI 2017 in Portland, OR and much more.  

Here are some pictures from recent adventures:
]]><![CDATA[We were busy at AGU this year...]]>Wed, 11 Jan 2017 22:34:02 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/we-were-busy-at-agu-this-yearThe EPIC lab was busy with great presentations and sessions at AGU this year! 

Dr. Christy Till
Talk: “New Approaches for Identifying the P-T-X-t Histories and Eruption Triggers for Silicic Magmas; An Example Examining the Scaup Lake Rhyolite, Yellowstone Caldera, WY”

Meghan Guild, PhD candidate (third year)
Talk: “Stability of Aqueous Carbon Species in Subduction Zone Fluids” Talk

Kara Brugman, PhD candidate (third year)
Talk: “Clinopyroxene Diffusion Chronometry of the Scaup Lake Rhyolite, Yellowstone Caldera, WY” Talk

Hannah Shamloo, PhD student (second year)
Poster: “Petrologic Insights into the Triggering Mechanism for the Lava Creek Tuff Super-Eruption Yellowstone Caldera, WY” Poster, V23B-2979

Jamie Shaffer, Masters Student at New Mexico State, former EPIC research assistant
Poster: “New Temperature and H2O estimates for Post Caldera Yellowstone Rhyolite Lavas from Feldspar Geothermometry and Rhyolite-MELTS Modeling”

Dr. Kayla Iacovino, EPIC lab postdoc
Convening a VGP session V34C on volatiles in volcanic processes: “Fluids, Crystals, and Melts: The Role of Volatiles in Volcanic Processes from Mantle to Surface”
]]><![CDATA[EPIC grad student and postdoc work featured in the media]]>Wed, 11 Jan 2017 22:29:15 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/epic-grad-student-h-shamloos-research-featured-in-eos
Picture
EPIC graduate student H. Shamloo's research on the Lava Creek Tuff super-eruption at Yellowstone was recently featured in an article in the publication EOS after following her poster presentation the December 2016 American Geophysical Union meeting.  Check it out here: eos.org/articles/pinpointing-the-trigger-behind-yellowstones-last-supereruption
Picture
EPIC post-doc Dr. Kayla Iacovino recently had her reserach on Mt. Paektu in N. Korea featured in a number of news outlets inclduing the New York Times, Nature Magazine and NPR.  More about it here! ​
]]><![CDATA[Japan Summer 2016 Field Work Etc.]]>Thu, 11 Aug 2016 16:53:22 GMThttps://expet.weebly.com/news/japan-summer-2016-field-work-etcWe spent an exciting three weeks in Japan this summer doing field work, visiting collaborators at Kanazawa University, attending the Goldschmidt Conference and exploring Mt. Fuji geology.
Supported and motivated by our NSF grant (EAR #1447342) to explore subduction zone mantle wedge processes in exhumed Japanese peridotites, EPIC PhD Student Meghan Guild and EPIC PI Christy Till traveled to Japan this summer for a host of activities.  First and foremost was our successful (and rainy!) field work in the Higashi-Akaishi peridotite on the Japanese island of Shikoku, which built upon our sampling trip there last summer.  After that we were off to visit collaborator Dr. Tomoyuki Mizukami at Kanazawa University on the North coast of Japan, where we had great discussions, sample exchanges, giving talks on our research and an amazing seafood dinner.  Then off to Goldschmidt, where both Meghan and Christy gave talks, meet with scientists in our field, and last but not least went on a field trip to explore the recent eruptive history of Mt. Fuji with the experts.  It was an incredible three weeks, here's a few photos that give you a taste of the fun!
]]>