Blair Schoene - About Me
I just started as assistant professor in Geosciences at Princeton in the fall of 2009. This was following a 3-year post-doc in Geneva, Switzerland, where I was working in Urs Schaltegger's istope geochemistry lab, studying the rates and causes of the end-Triassic mass extinction event. This involved U-Pb zircon geochronology, which I also applied to understanding magmatic processes in the Eocene Adamello batholith, in northern Italy. I defended my Ph.D in the department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT in 2006, where I worked with Sam Bowring on applying structural geology, geochemistry, numerical modeling and geo- and thermochronology towards understanding Mesoarchean craton construction and stabilization. I got a B.A. in geology from the Colorado College in 1999, where I also spent some time teaching in 1999-2000 and 2006.
My interest in the Earth Sciences began as a love for the outdoors, usually manifested as some form of extreme or not-so-extreme sport. Later I learned to make observations from the microscopic to global scale to learn about the past and current evolution of our planet. Radiogenic isotope geology is crucial in calibrating the absolute rates of these processes and to seamlessly piece together the sequence of Earth history. I'm currently in the process of designing and installing a radiogenic isotope geology lab on the second floor of Guyot Hall, which will host world-class mineral characterization and clean room facilities and a Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometer. We will be focusing initially on high-precision U-Pb geo- and thermochronology, Sm-Nd and Rb-Sr isotope tracing, and eventually U-series tracing and dating. Please stay tuned as we get ramped up!