Bio: Tushar Mittal is an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at The Pennsylvania State University. He is the Packard Fellow for Science and Engineering 2024-2029. a Fellow for Scialog: Sustainable Minerals, Metals and Materials 2024-2027, and a Wilson Faculty Fellowship in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences 2024-2027. He completed his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 2020 and was a Crosby Postdoc Fellow at MIT from 2020-2022.
Mittal’s research focuses on four major themes: (A) volcano science (modeling magmatic processes and submarine volcanism), (B) planetary geophysics (planet formation and geodynamics, planetary science), and (C) volcano/tectonic-climate interactions (understanding the impact of solid Earth process on the ocean-atmosphere system across a range of timescales – months to Myr), and (D) geofluids & geomechanics (understanding rock rheology and fluid-rock reactions on a micro-scale and developing thermodynamically consistent upscaled models; using seismic information in the lab & field to investigate processes in real-time for detailed process understanding).
In addition, he has a few active projects focused on utilizing my Earth science knowledge for various applications related to energy transition – geothermal energy (especially enhanced geothermal systems at high temperatures), critical mineral discovery (Li, REE, Copper), geologic carbon sequestration (enhanced rock weathering, basalt carbon sequestration), and hydrogen production (reactive transport).