Welcoming the 2022 class of postdoctoral fellows

Emmanuel Codillo 

Coming to Carnegie from his Ph.D. at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Emmanuel Codillo is an experimental petrologist who is interested in understanding the mechanisms by which the slab materials and signatures are transferred to the mantle wedge leading to arc magmatism, as well as the petrophysical and chemical consequences of fluid-rock interactions in the slab-mantle interface regions.

During his fellowship, he will use an integrated experimental petrology and stable isotope geochemistry approach to study deep serpentinite subduction and the fate of water in the lower mantle. He will collaborate with Staff Scientists Anne Pommier and Anat Shahar.

Vasilije Dobrosavljevic

Coming to us from his Ph.D. at Caltech, Vilije Dobrasavljevic is a mineral physicist who studies the connections between atomic-scale physical properties of Earth’s building blocks and the planetary-scale geophysical processes that shape and sustain our habitable planet.

During his fellowship, Dobrosavljevic will collaborate with Alexander Goncharov and Michael Walter on an integrative multi-technique study to assess the possibility of heat-channeling mountains at Earth's core-mantle boundary.

Shubham Kanodia is an astronomer who comes to us from his Ph.D. at Penn State’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He uses and develops instrumentation and statistical tools to detect exoplanets and characterize their populations.

During his postdoctoral fellowship, he will collaborate with Johanna Teske and Alan Boss to study the “exoplanetary ecosystem” by measuring the masses of gas giants orbiting M dwarfs and use this data to estimate both their detection sensitivity and occurrence rates as observed in the TESS mission. His project aims to help us better understand the formation of gas giants around M dwarf stars.

He has developed several open source python tools, including Barycorrpy (barycentric corrections for stellar radial velocity observations), and MRExo (fits Mass-Radios relations on any 2-dimensional dataset).

Oded Elezar

Oded Elezar is a geochemist who comes to us from his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is interested in the role of fluids and melts at high pressure and temperature and their role in the Earth’s mantle.

During his postdoctoral fellowship, he will collaborate with Steve Shirey and Anat Shahar to track the origin of mantle fluids using novel non-traditional Fe and Si stable isotopes on mineral inclusions in natural diamonds.

Julien Rojas-Arispe

Julien Rojas-Arispe is a cosmochemist who specializes in the isotopic compositions of organic matter and the flux of interplanetary dust. Coming to us from a Ph.D. at the University of Paris-Saclay, he will collaborate with Conel Alexander and Andrew Steele to gain insight into the furthest reaches of our Solar system through the isotopic analysis of ultra-carbonaceous Antarctic micrometeorites.

Isabelle Genot

Isabelle Genot is a stable isotope geochemist who focuses on the sulfur cycle in the Earth’s mantle. She comes to us from her Ph.D. at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris.

During her fellowship, Genot will collaborate with Anat Shahar to better determine the origin of sulfur on Earth by constraining the equilibrium sulfur isotope fractionation between sulfide and sulfate in basaltic magmas.

Dana Anderson

Dana Anderson is an astrochemist who studies chemical processes occurring in planet-forming disks around young stars. Coming to us from a postdoctoral position at the University of Virginia, Dana is interested in exploring the chemical diversity in potential planet-forming materials and how it relates to the eventual composition of planetesimals and planets. In particular, she seeks to understand what controls the abundance of important chemical elements, including carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen.

At Carnegie, she will connect her astrochemical modeling and observations of planet-forming disks to the study of more mature planetary systems in collaboration with Alycia Weinberger, Johanna Teske, and Peter Gao.

Ming Hao

Ming Hao is a high-pressure mineral physicist who comes to us from his Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico, where he worked with his Ph.D. advisor Jin Zhang. He uses a wide range of instrumentation in his research, including X-ray diffraction, high-pressure experiments, diamond anvil cells, and Brillouin spectroscopy.

At the Earth and Planets Laboratory, Ming will continue investigating the physical properties of the Earth’s mantle using geophysical lab measurements at high pressure and temperature. He will collaborate with experimentalists and geophysicists at EPL, including Mike Walter, Lara Wagner, Jill Yang, and Anne Pommier.

Nicole Wallack

Nicole Wallack is an astronomer who studies the formation and evolution of exoplanets by characterizing exoplanet atmospheres and protoplanetary disks. Coming to us from a Ph.D. at Caltech, Wallack will work alongside Johanna Teske to study the atmospheres of a population of sub-Neptunes and super-Earths using the James Webb Space Telescope to learn more about the atmospheric diversity of small planets.

Megan Mouser

Megan Mouser is an experimental petrologist who joins us from her Ph.D. in planetary geoscience from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Megan’s research involves experimental approaches to evaluating silicate melt properties and trace element fractionation during crystallization at high pressures and temperatures.

At Carnegie, Mouser will study element partitioning alongside Staff Scientist Yingwei Fei to better understand deep magma ocean and planetary differentiation processes.