Geodynamics Program

Overview

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Geodynamics Seminar Program (also MIT-JP Course #12.752/12.753) is a long-standing integrated curriculum that fosters interdisciplinary research in Earth, life and planetary sciences among students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty. The program is centered around a spring semester seminar series which focuses on a common theme from the perspective of a wide variety of different disciplines. Recent topics have included themes such as: Coral Reef Sensing and Solutions (2023); Ocean Based Climate Solutions (2022); Biogeochemical Cycles: the Past, Present and Future Habitability of the Earth (2020); North Atlantic Climate & Civilization (2019); and The Chemistry of the Ocean Microbiome (2018).

Seminar speakers (12 – 13 guest speakers) present weekly throughout the semester on different topics related to this theme. New themes are selected annually by faculty and students. Following the seminar series is a field study tour to a representative and instructive location related to the program's theme that year. The weekly Geodynamics seminars are intended to be accessible to a broad audience, and are attended by a wide range of students, scientists and staff from across the Institution.

WHOI faculty (including in collaboration with post-docs and/or senior graduate students) are welcome to propose a new topic for a future Geodynamics seminar. Planning meetings are held each Fall to present new theme ideas and to select the topic for the following spring semester.

Study Tour

The program sponsors a study tour run by the science organizers that is generally held during the summer following the spring semester. Participation is open, but priority is given to students registered in the course, with additional spaces as budgets and logistics allow.

Student Participation

Students can take the course for credit every year that they are in residence at the Institution.

Sponsors

The Geodynamics Program is sponsored by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Academic Programs Office, and the Office of the Deputy Director & Vice President for Science and Engineering.

For more information or to propose a theme please feel free to contact:

Dr. Sarah Das
Geodynamics Program Director
sdas@whoi.edu

Meg Gresh
Geodynamics Program Coordinator
margaret.gresh@whoi.edu

In June 2022, MIT/WHOI Joint Program students traveled to Iceland to visit CarbFix, one of the first sites in the world that is permanently sequestering carbon dioxide underground by reacting it with rocks. The group got a tour of the facility with scientists working on improving the sequestration and carbon tracking at the site. The group then spent some time visiting the Southwestern part of the island, including the recent Fagradalsfjall eruption site with collaborator Saemi Halldorsson from the University of Iceland. Ann Dunlea and Adam Subhas, both Assistant Scientists in WHOI’s Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry department, co-led the trip.