This fall the Hren research group will be adding to its numbers with a new graduate student, Katherine Truong. Katherine is geosciences student hailing from Henrietta, New York (a suburb of the city of Rochester in Western New York). She graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a B.A. in Geological Sciences, and is coming to UCONN to pursue a Masters Degree in Geological Science. Katherine discovered a love for geology through her first geology course at Geneseo and has since studied abroad in Athens Greece and Puerto Rico. Welcome Katherine!

Undergraduate geosciences student Greg Harris has been awarded 2 travel grants for summer 2014. The first is the UCONN Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) . Greg will travel to Nevada and collect samples to look at the paleoclimate change in that region. Greg’s second travel grant comes from the Keck Geology Consortium. The Consortium is a multi-university research opportunity in Colorado. Greg will be working under Will Ouimet (UCONN) studying the effect of forest fires and fire frequency in the Fourmile Catchment, Front Range, Colorado. He and 6 other undergraduate students (supervised by three project leaders, Ouimet included) will collect and analyze samples from the region and determine the importance of fire in the critical zone, the geomorphic significance  of catastrophic floods in channel and flood plain evolution and the variable effects of the September 2013 floods from the upper to lower Fourmile basin. Greg, currently a junior,  will use these research projects a basis for his senior honors thesis next year.

Kellyn Patros, undergraduate chemistry student in the Hren Group, recently graduated from UCONN. At the chemistry department luncheon, Kellyn was awarded the  Roland Ward Thesis Award. Her thesis, titled “Climate and precipitation patterns in NE Spain during the past 65 Million years: A compound-specific stable isotope record”, was selected among 5 other highly qualified chemistry department candidates. She will receive a $500 scholarship and a plaque to be displayed in the department. In August Kellyn will depart from the Hren group to pursue her PhD in Physical Chemistry at Indiana University. Congratulations Kellyn!