Research
news:
| 2011 April Verity (who is now working as a science writer for Carbon Brief) has passed her viva with flying colours. Congratulations. March Pieter's paper on the role of sulphate on the calcite/aragonite seas has been published in Geology - see Publications Zongbo's paper on the chemical weathering of iron particles dusts has been published in Global Biogeochemical cycles - see Publications February Gabi has passed her viva with minor corrections. Congratulations!! Zongbo's paper on the Iron dissolution kinetics in dusts has been published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics - see Publications January Ellen Avery has submitted her PhD thesis on Jan 4th. Congratulations and well done. Juan Diego's in situ crystallization paper on Vaterite and Calcite has been published in Nanoscale - see Publications 2010 November-December Adriana, Pieter and Juan Diego - now available: video interviews on the EAG youtube site November Gabriella Kakonyi and Verity Payne have submitted their PhD thesis on Nov 30th. Congratulations and well done. September Loredana Brinza has started a postdoctoral position at the Diamond Light Source on beamline I18. August Liane and Dominique Tobler (who is now a postdoc at the University of Glasgow) have participated again in the summer 2010 AMASE expedition. More details and Liane's blog about part 1 of the expedition can be found here July Loredana Brinza has passed her Viva on July 16th. Congratulations. June-Sept Andy Bray will spend ~ 2.5 months at the University of Iceland to work on flow through experiments together with Domenik Wolff-Boenisch. May Paper of Cristina Moisescu on Magnetotcatic bacteria from the collaborative work with Sarah Staniland has been published in Journal or Basic Microbiology - see Publications April Imad Ahmed - a former Leeds postdoc now working in Lancaster - had the first paper from his work in Leeds published in Langmuir - see Publications March 30th 2010 Hong Phuc Vu has submitted his thesis and his viva is scheduled for April 30th. Congratulations and well done. Also Hong's 1st major paper has been published in Crystal Growth and Design - see Publications LAB MOVE - Jan-Feb 2010 We finally moved back into our new labs in the refurbished building/lab suite. Pictures and links to the new labs will be up in the next few months once all is running again. 2009 August 4th to 26th Juan Diego and Liane have spend almost a month on Svalbard as part of AMASE 2009. See blog entries and news stories here. Aug 2009 Dominique Tobler a recently graduated PhD student from the Benning group had her second paper from her PhD work (SAXS and DLS of silica nanoparticles) published in Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta - see Publications - this work is also work highlighted in the ESRF News Vol 51 page 7 7th of August 2009 The 4th baby girl in the Benning group was born to Loredana Brinza and Dan Tepes; Mother, dauther (Teodora) and father are all well up and enjoying the new family life. July 2009 Zongbo Shi has published his 1st paper on Iron nanoparticles in clouds in Environmental Science and Technology - see Publications 30th of June 2009 Steeve Bonneville's paper on: "Plant-driven fungal weathering: Early stages of mineral alteration at the nanometer scale" has been published in Geology and was featured on AlphaGalileo European Research Highlights news as shown below: "For the first time, the boundary between fungi and rock has been imaged on a nanoscale --unraveling the fundamental processes by which fungi break down rocks into soil whilst extracting essential nutrients. Bonneville et al. show that fungi launch a dual attack to decompose rocks, first weakening them through mechanical strain and then by chemical alteration. This process is extremely common (occurring in 90% of trees in the Northern Hemisphere where roots are in symbiosis with fungi), but up to this point little understood. In exchange for the delivery of nutrients, the fungi receive carbon that has been fixed by the trees during photosynthesis, which effectively links the carbon cycle with the formation of soil from rocks. The implications of this work are therefore very broad, from soil fertility and agriculture to the chemistry of river water, the atmosphere, and Earth's climate." Follwoing on our work has also been highlighted on a series of websites including in NERC's Online Planet Earth, ScienceDaily and ScienceNews or Nature 29th of June 2009 Liane was awarded the 2009 Wolfson Research Merit Award by the UK Royal Society 21st to 27th of June 2009 Juan Diego Rodgriguez Blanco has been selected by the Geochemical Society to write a blog during the V. M. Goldschmidt Conference in Davos, Switzerland this year. His blog can be found via the following URL http://geochemicalnews.wordpress.com/ Dominique Tobler's talk at the V. M. Goldschmidt conference in Davos was highlighted in various press releases. June 2009 Liane and colleagues from AMASE have published a new paper in Astrobiology on a New cleaning protocol that has been widely publicised over the web; see Publications , Leeds University on-line press release or PDF-link - and other web links about this work and our rover as the Journal cover photo  Feb-April 2009 Dominique Tobler (a former PhD student in the Benning-group) is spending ~ 6 months at the NASA Goddard Stace Flight Center to work on biomarkers in ice; she just had her second major paper accepted for publication with Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta Feb-April 2009 Karina Krarup Sand (Nano-Science Center, University of Copenhagen) one of Susan Stipp's students has visited Leeds twice between Jan and April 2009 for initial carbonate experiments; she has produced two encyclopedias of here excellent results :-) Feb 2009 Steeve Bonneville had his first paper with the high resolution TEM work on the fungal-biotite interactions from the NERC Weathering Consortium accepted for publication in Geology. see Publications Jan 2009 Loredana Brinza has her Cadmium-algal paper published in Bioresource Technology - see Publications 2008 Dec 2008 Dominique Tobler has her first paper published in Geobiology - see Publications Oct 2008 to Jan 2009 Teresa Roncal Herrero (University Paul Sabatier/CNRS, Toulouse) one of the Toulouse based MIR students has spent ~4 months in Leeds working together with Juan Diego on a whole series of experiments on metal phosphate nucleation, growth and crystallization, to complement her PhD studies on metal phosphate dissolution that she has performed in Toulouse. Nov 2008 to April 2009 Liane was appointed as one of the two 2008/09 UK Mineralogical Society Distinguished Lecturers to give a series of lectures at various Universities accross the UK and Ireland. September-October We moved!!! The Benning labs moved into new location for the ~ 14-18 months until our old labs are fully refurbished and expanded. Loredana and Adriana have coordinated the move and all worked out rather smoothly and with relatively little interruption - so well done; August 19th to 22nd A large group participated in the GES-8 meeting in London; Liane gave one of the plenary talks and many students/postdocs presented posters and also used this great opportinity to publish their first results as an short 4 -page papers (see publication list) July 27th to August 18th Dominique Tobler and Liane participated in the AMASE 2009 expedition and after almost 3 weeks of arctic work returned with many samples and great stories. August 2008 Lois Davidson has her first paper from her thesis published in American Mineralogist - see publications July 12th to 18th The whole group participated in the 2008 Goldschmidt conference in Vancouver (Canada). We had a very good experience and presence with a total of 14 talks and 1 poster. April 17th Pieter Bots who started his PhD on April 1st in Leeds has been awarded a Distinction Thesis Prize for his MSc thesis from the graduation that was held on 17 April during the Spring Symposium of the Section for Environmental Chemistry from the Dutch Royal Chemistry Society (KNCV) in Ede, The Netherlands. More information (unfortunately only in Dutch) at www.kncv.nl. April 1st Dominique Tobler was awarded a WUN (World University Network) Research Mobility Programme grant to spend 3 months (Sept - Nov 2008) in the Geosciences Department at Penn State University in the group of Prof. Kate Freeman to learn about organic geochemistry and to carry our research related to her proposal: Biomarkers preserved in silica sinters as proxies for biogeochemical paleoenvironments. CONGRATULATIONS February 21st Adriana gave birth to a lovely baby girl (Juanita) after a long delivery. CONGRATULATIONS; Mother and child are both fine and Miller as well - now they just need a lot of sleep. This is the 3rd girl in the "Benning group" after Vu and Stefan's girls. January Aryani and Liane have participated in the "School on Synchrotron X-ray and IR Methods Focusing on Environmental Sciences", Janauary 21-23, 2008 at ANKA in Germany. 2007 December Postdoctoral Fellow Zongbo Shi has joined the Leeds team from the University of Kumamoto, Japan and will be working on a NERC funded project with Mike Krom, Liane G. Benning and Ken Carslaw at the University of Leeds and Tim Jickells and Alex Baker at the University of East Anglia. His project is relatd to: Changes in speciation of iron in Saharan dust by atmospheric processing. 21-26 November MIR and MinGro network Winter School 2007: Fundamentals of Thermodynamics and Kinetics of Water/Mineral Reactions, La Palma, Spain, Gabi, Aryani, Juan Diego, Loredana, Verity, Sam and Liane have 'suffered' for a week the terrible November sunshine in La Palma more details see here October Congratulations to Imad Ahmed who's family is now one little boy larger and happier :-) September 1st Juan Diego Rodriguez Blanco has joined the Leeds team from Oviedo where he finished a PhD with Manolo Prieto. Juan Diego will work on the nucleation and growth of calcium carbonate phases as part of the Mineral Nucleation and Growth Kinetics (MIN-GRO) Research and Training Network funded by the European Union under the Sixth Framework Marie Curie Actions. August 2007 Liane has again been on a blissful AMASE trip to the arctic - see full details on Marilyn Fogel's website June 19th BIOTRACS visiting PhD student Kleopatra Detsi has won a prize for the best student oral presentation at the ''Rocks 'n' Beasts: Interdisciplinary conference on vent systems'' held at the University of Leeds, from 17th to 19th of June 2007. June 10th Two members of the group (Cristina Moisescu and Imad Ahmed) have both been accepted (with full funding) as participants in the 9th European Mimeralogical Union Summerschool: "Nanoscopic Approaches in Earth and Planetary Sciences" that will take place at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich between the 12th and 18th of Augyst 2007. June 1st and ongoing: we are looking for PhD students for the following two projects: * Marie Curie Research Training Network PhD studentship (Mineral Nucleation and Growth Kinetics (MIN-GRO)): Experimental investigation of calcium carbonate mineralogy in past and future oceans. (only for non-UK, preferentially EU students) * NERC tied PhD studentship: Nutrient Bioavailability and cycling in mycorrizhal networks and their affect on global elemental cycles; part of the Weathering Science Consortium (eligible people are either from the UK or EU) May 25th: Unique Student Opportunity to take part in 2007 Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE 2007)for advice about AMASE in general and how to apply contact Liane G. Benning the sole UK AMASE team member .(deadline 29 June 2007) Ever wondered what it would be
like
to spend two weeks in Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean?
Ever dreamed of taking part in an expedition among an international
crew of scientists and engineers? Well here is your chance to
participate in the Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition 2007.
for more info see ESA
website AMASE develops and tests payload instruments for future Mars missions on Mars analogue field sites in Svalbard, including instruments that will fly onboard both NASA’s MSL- and ESA’s ExoMars missions. There is an opportunity for one student to participate in AMASE 2007. The role of the winning student in the expedition will either be to propose and carry out her/his own experiment linked to this field of research or simply to observe and assist the other experimenters. The winner will also be expected to write a daily 'blog' or diary, in English, for the ESA website. May 1st: Verity Payne was successful in getting funding for the Palaeoclimatology Summer School: Past Global Change Reconstruction and Modelling Techniques; July 18-August 3, 2007 - Urbino, Italy; http://www.uniurb.it/ussp/ Dominique Tobler was successful in getting a Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) grant to participate in Alpach Summer School on Astrobiology: Life Detection in and from Space; July 17 -26 Alpbach/Tyrol - Austria; http://www.summerschoolalpbach.at/ April 15th: Juan Diego Rodriguez Blanco has accepted the postdoctoral fellowship position in Leeds as part of the Mineral Nucleation and Growth Kinetics (MIN-GRO) Research and Training Network funded by the European Union under the Sixth Framework Marie Curie Actions.; he will start his position in Leeds on September 1st. May 21st: Paper: Hunger and Benning (2007) Greigite: a true intermediate on the polysulfide pathway to pyrite; just published in Geochemical Transactions 2007, 8:1 doi:10.1186/1467-4866-8-1 March 1st - June 1st: Cristina Moisescu from the Romanian Academy of Sciences, Bucarest University has joined the group for a 3 month fellowship funded by BIOTRACS (BIOtransformations of TRace elements in AquatiC Systems) an Early-Stage Training (EST) Fellowship, funded by the European Union under the Sixth Framework Marie Curie Actions. Her project in Leeds will try to elucidate the "Controlled biomineralization of magnetite (Fe3O4) by Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense". February 12-25th: 'Life
on Mars'
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