From the local water quality of Narragansett Bay to river-dune interactions on Titan, DEEPS undergraduate students participated in a variety of cutting edge research projects during their 2026 summer break. We're proud to showcase their research and experiences.

Following two powerful earthquakes that recently shook northern Venezuela, rescue teams have been racing to pull survivors from the rubble. For those trapped, experts say that survival depends on many factors, including weather and access to water and air. DEEPS Professor Victor Tsai commented on the factors that affect earthquake survival, noting that trapped victims are more likely to survive if they're able to wait in a debris-free pocked, called a "survivable void space."

Olivia Anderson shares her scientific journey in the geosciences in this spotlight interview by DEEPS Communications Assistant, Hania Khan.

New research offer clues to Mars’s history, including what violent collisions it experienced in the past and how it lost its magnetic field. Professor Ingrid Daubar, former member of the InSight science team, commented on these recent studies, saying, “There are connections to our own planet, to how planets form in general and to how we understand different planets outside our solar system.”

A new publication in G3 led by Assistant Professor Emily H. G. Cooperdock untangles the systematics of uranium enrichment for serpentinites from different tectonic settings and explores potential mineral hosts. The researchers found that "uranium enrichment is most common in the upper 100m of the seafloor and is not correlated with degree of serpentinization. We also find a correlation between U concentration and iron-oxidation, which we use to suggest that U is hosted in ferric iron minerals, possibly iron-oxides." The paper also provides insights on using uranium as a tracer for tectonic setting, fluid rock interactions, and redox records in the solid Earth system.

From freshly formed simple craters on the Moon to hydrogen sulfide production in the Salton Sea, DEEPS undergraduate students participated in cutting edge research throughout the 2025 summer break. We are proud to showcase some of these research projects with this photo series.

Strong new evidence suggests that primordial material from the planet’s center is somehow making its way out. Continent-size entities anchored to the core-mantle boundary might be involved. Assistant Professor Harriet Lau commented on this exciting research, noting: if material is effusing from the core into the mantle, is the boundary between them “as distinct as we think?”

In a new study published in Icarus, a team of researchers led by DEEPS graduate student Thomas Williams and Professors Stephen Parman and Alberto Saal have used modern analysis techniques to closely examine the microscopic mineral deposits on the outside of lunar beads from the Apollo mission. The team's findings suggest a change in eruption style over the course of a pyroclastic volcanic eruption in the Taurus-Littrow Valley.

Geologists generally think that creep happens on faults that slice through particularly slippery rocks. But a recent study co-authored by Professor Victor Tsai reports that the overall structure of a fault network might also dictate why some faults creep rather than intermittently slip dramatically.

A team of Brown University students participated for the first time in the USDA Northeast Collegiate Soil Judging Competition.

Professor Greg Hirth has been awarded the 2024 Harry Hess Medal from the American Geophysical Union. The Harry H. Hess Medal is given annually to a senior scientist in recognition of outstanding achievements in research on the constitution and evolution of the Earth and other planets.

Anahi Carrera won within the Education section for her AGU presentation titled, "Underrepresentation of first-generation college students in the geosciences - A diverse group to support in the post-Affirmative Action era." Alexia Rojas won within Tectonophysics for her AGU presentation titled, "Long Term San Andreas Fault Offset Re-Examined Through a Multichronometer Study of a Key Piercing Point." We are very proud of Anahi and Alexia for their achievements and recognition from the community!

Rhode Island was among several East Coast states that felt a small earthquake on Friday morning, April 5th. Brown University Professor of Geological Sciences Karen Fischer says even though the quake was small, it was felt in multiple states because of the geologic makeup of the East Coast.

Professor Colleen Dalton talks with NBC 10 about the April 5th earthquake that struck New Jersey and why it was unusual.

DEEPS PhD candidate César Bucheli recently published a new paper in Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, titled “What can we learn from geothermobarometry at the dacitic Doña Juana Volcanic Complex (Colombia)? Implications for understanding Pleistocene crystal mushes and pre-eruptive storage conditions in the Northern Andes.” Bucheli and co-authors reconstructed the geochemical behavior of Pleistocene melts feeding eruptions of the Doña Juana Volcanic Complex (SW Colombia, Northern Andes) and found evidence to suggest the existence of one of the first examples of long-lived trans-crustal magma systems in the country.

Sonam Sherpa, one of IBES & DEEPS's newest postdoctoral researchers, recently offered insights in a Brown Daily Herald interview on an earthquake that shook her native Nepal earlier this month.

The Brown Daily Herald spoke with DEEPS researchers and faculty about the recent study using models atmospheric modeling to show that Venus once had plate tectonics similar to Earth.

Assistant Professor Emily Cooperdock and colleagues have published new research on uranium isotopes in serpentinite rocks found both underwater and on land. The team discovered that the uranium isotope ratios in submarine serpentinites are influenced by seafloor weathering and differ from seawater ratios. Overall, the results show exciting evidence that U-isotopes can be used to measure recent weathering of ultramafic serpentinites. The findings also caution against using these systems as indicators of ancient geological events.

Professors Kim Cobb and Alberto Saal have been elected as American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Fellows. They join 53 other individuals in the 2023 Class of Fellows. AGU, the world's largest Earth and space sciences association, annually recognizes a select number of individuals for its highest honors. Since 1962, the AGU Union Fellows Committee has selected less than 0.1% of members as new Fellows.

Professor Karen Fischer was selected to receive the AGU Inge Lehmann Medal, which is given annually to a senior scientist in recognition of outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure, composition, and dynamics of the Earth’s mantle and core. AGU, the world's largest Earth and space science association, annually recognizes a select number of individuals for its highest honors. 

A new technique for measuring past topography shows the Himalayas were more than halfway to their summit before a continental collision made them the highest range in the world. “Experts have long thought that it takes a massive tectonic collision, on the order of continent-to-continent scale, to produce the sort of uplift required to produce Himalaya-scale elevations,” said DEEPS Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra. “This study disproves that and sends the field in some interesting new directions.”

A new study shows evidence that, as recently as 1991, a volcano erupted on Venus. “This study is really important,” said DEEPS Professor Emeritus James W. Head, who was not involved in the research. “Could this be the way Earth was in its earliest history? Or the way Earth is headed in its future?”

Why was the long-term global cooling trend of the Cenozoic interrupted by a several-million-year interval of warming during the middle of the Miocene? Herbert et al. present a reconstruction of global ocean crustal production to show that tectonic degassing of carbon can account for most of the long-term ice sheet and global temperature evolution for the past 20 million years (see the Perspective by von der Heydt). These results provide further support for the idea that sea floor spreading rates can control global changes in climate.

The field of seismology is entering a new era where our understanding of earthquakes and the solid earth is increasingly driven by new Big Data experiments and algorithms.

Imprint of the Continental Strike-Slip Fault Geometrical Structure in Geophysical Data