Department of Earth, Environmental & Planetary Sciences

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Harriet Lau

Manning Assistant Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences
harriet_lau@brown.edu
Research Profile
Harriet C. P. Lau Website
Research Interests Earth History, Geophysics, Oceans Ice and Atmospheres, Environmental Science
Pronouns she/her

Biography

My research group explores global-scale geodynamical problems across many time scales. This includes solid Earth and ocean tides (acting on hours to years), the deformation of the Earth due to the melting of large Pleistocene ice sheets (years to tens of thousands of years), and mantle convection, the process that drives plate tectonics (millions to billions of years). The theme of all of this work is to understand how we can coherently characterize the Earth's behavior across these vastly different time scales and learn fundamental things about our planet.

Recent News

TEDx New England

How the Earth's Rhythms Keep Time

DEEPS Assistant Professor Harriet Lau recently presented at TEDx New England on the our planet's natural cycles and rhythms – from micrometers to thousands of miles, and from milliseconds to millions of years. Throughout Earth's multi-billion-year history, these rhythms collide, interact, and unfold, influencing humanity and shaping our experience of time.
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Quanta Magazine

Earth’s Core Appears To Be Leaking Up and Out of Earth’s Surface

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?”
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Science Advances

Coupled fates of Earth’s mantle and core: Early sluggish-lid tectonics and a long-lived geodynamo

In a recent study published in Science Advances, DEEPS PhD candidate Manar Al Asad and Assistant Professor Harriet Lau demonstrate that Earth's early tectonic activity was likely very different from what we see today. They propose a 'sluggish-lid' mode, where the Earth's outer layer moved slowly and was partially disconnected from the mantle. The new model addresses previous challenges in understanding Earth's thermal history and tectonic evolution, offering new insights into how Earth's magnetic field is maintained throughout most of Earth's history.
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The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Assistant Professor Harriet Lau Receives Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering

One of the newest DEEPS faculty members, Assistant Professor Harriet Lau, has received the prestigious Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. This is in recognition of Harriet's outstanding work to understand the relationships between Earth's deformation and climate.
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