Bio: Megan Holycross joined Cornell’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in July 2020 as an assistant professor. Her research seeks to understand the processes that have differentiated the chemistry of Earth’s solid interior, mostly through laboratory experiments. Prior to joining Cornell, Megan was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow with appointments at the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University. She earned her B.Sc. from Michigan State University in 2012 and her Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2017.
Holycross uses controlled laboratory experiments to develop new geochemical tools to quantify the rates (time) and conditions (temperature, pressure, redox state) of magmatic and metamorphic processes. Areas of interest include “crystal clock” diffusion chronometry, trace element partitioning in subduction zone settings, and multi-valent element x-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy.