Current Lab Members

Dustin Trail

Associate Professor

Dustin in a lab gazing at the camera.

Dustin's interests include experimental geochemistry; early Earth - including understanding the origin(s) of the oldest terrestrial rocks and minerals; planetary geology; astrobiology; lunar geochemistry; "water" in nominally anhydrous minerals; isotope geochemistry and geochronology of accessory minerals; redox chemistry of magmas, fluids, and minerals - including the application of synchrotron-based techniques.


Amanda Maslyn

Laboratory Technician

Amanda smiling with ear protection.

Amanda oversees the daily operations of the LA-ICP-MS, benchtop SEM and experimental laboratories. 

 

 


Ian Szumila

Postdoctoral Researcher

Ian posing next to a river.

Ian is a planetary geochemist with research interests in diffusion chemistry, trace element geochemistry and geochronology of shocked zircon, impact craters, machine learning and shock metamorphism. He is currently investigating a zircon dataset collected from fieldwork at the Sudbury impact structure in Ontario, Canada. He is hoping to generate new insights into the relationships between zircon trace element geochemistry and melt sheet lithology.


Wriju Chowdhury

Postdoctoral Researcher

Wriju climbing rocks.

Wriju is an experimental petrologist who works to calibrate elemental partitioning relationships between phases in equilibrium in an attempt to recreate the chemistry of transient and extinct reservoirs. His primary motivation is to unveil the "Dark Ages" of the Early Earth but also works in more modern times as well.Please reach out to me for any project or research needs.


Archi Dasgupta

PhD Student

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I am a high – temperature geochemist and experimentalist  with research interests primarily on understanding the origin and the processes involved in development of the Archean and  Hadean rocks and developing calibration techniques to understand the redox conditions and chemistry of early Earth magma, minerals and fluids. Currently my research focuses on developing  a calibration technique to model a relationship between elemental partitioning and oxygen fugacity in a zircon and rutile system.


Sumana Roy

PhD Student

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Sumana is a geologist interested in Geochemistry, Astrobiology and Planetary Geosciences. She is fascinated by early Earth environments and terrestrial analogue studies. She is also interested in investigating conditions for life on early Earth.


Veanessya Lopez

Undergraduate Student


Interested in joining our group?

Please look over our lab pages and through some of our publications to see if we might be a good fit. Most students look to me for some research direction when they start graduate studies. I am also strongly supportive of student-generated ideas and will support them financially if I can. Please contact me by email at dustin.trail@rochester.edu to learn about current opportunities.