University of Texas Institute for Geophysics

Last week, #UTIG Research Associate Elizabeth Spiers (left), Graduate research assistant and doctoral student in the @txgeosciences Medha Prakash (center), & postdoctoral fellow Arefe Nezami joined this year’s #AbSciCon26 to present out of this world research! 🪐☄️🌊

Our Marine Geology and Geophysics field course is as hands-on as it gets💪💪💪 See what a typical morning of hunting down sediment samples and collecting cores on Harbor Island in Port Aransas, TX looks like! 🏖️🏖️

Michael Sweet, a research scientist at #UTIG and co-program director of the Gulf Basin Depositional Synthesis (GBDS) project is the recipient of the 2026 Doris Malkin Curtis Medal by the Gulf Coast Section of the Society for Sedimentary Geology. ig.utexas.edu/news/2026/swee…

Join #UTIG Research Associate Professor Chris Lowery on Tuesday, June 2 at 4:00 p.m. CT for a special presentation with the American Museum of Natural History on the ways ocean drilling offers insights into Earth’s past. amnh.org/calendar/speak…

Congrats to @txgeosciences' Thorsten Becker on his election to the German National Academy of Sciences @Leopoldina—just the third geodynamicist in its 400+ year history. 🌍 Read about his work: utx.global/4eMlkpY. @UTGeophysics @OdenInstitute @TexasScience @UTexasResearch

Learn more about the first Joint International Earthquake Science Symposium hosted at UTIG in 2024. ig.utexas.edu/news/2024/scie…

This year’s symposium emphasized research on marine-based observations, subduction-zone processes, and more. The Joint International Earthquake Science Symposium is collaboration between UTIG, @JAMSTEC_PR and #GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel.

#UTIG experts joined colleagues from around the world for the third Joint International Earthquake Science Symposium hosted at the #GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel. Attendees toured the centre's facilities, including GEOMAR’s Core & Rock repository, seen below.

Who says researchers are the only ones who get to have all the fun in the field? The #UTIG admin team hopped on the R/V Scott Petty to survey Lake Austin, which sees rising amounts of invasive #hydrilla as temperatures warm. The plant is a known disrupter of native ecosystems.

Thanks to all of our guest speakers who joined us this semester for our #UTIGSeminars! We'll be back with a new round of presenters in the fall! In the meantime, catch up on any of the talks you may have missed this spring on our YouTube page: @UTGeophysics/videos" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@UTGeophysics/…

Duncan oversees UTIG facilities and instruments and conducts research on microplastic levels in bodies of water around Texas. He also helps lead the Marine Geology & Geophysics Field Course & captains the institute’s R/V Scott Petty. Please join us in congratulating Dan! 🎉🎉🎉

#UTIG Engineering Scientist Dan Duncan is a recipient of a 2026 UT Austin President’s Outstanding Staff Award! “Thank you for all the kind words from all that contributed to my nomination. It was really nice to hear from all the people I have worked with,” said Duncan.

As the effects of #ClimateChange intensify with time, climate researchers are looking for ways to address them. Enter solar climate intervention, a burgeoning research field that #UTIG researcher Danielle Touma expects to become more prominent very soon. ig.utexas.edu/news/2026/utig…

Join us for our final #UTIGSeminar for the spring 2026 semester! We're welcoming Jiabao Li from Northeastern University this Friday at the ROC. More info about Jiabao's talk can be found here: ig.utexas.edu/utig-seminar-s…

What do the @NASAArtemis II astronauts and generations of geosciences students from @UTAustin have in common? They were taught field geology by Mark Helper, who led the UT geology field camp for 37 years. 🤘 jsg.utexas.edu/news/2026/04/a…

“Medha is a truly remarkable doctoral student who is pursuing a research path she designed in how impact craters develop microbial ecosystems with field work funding that she acquired,” said faculty advisor Sean Gulick, who nominated Prakash for the award.

“[This award] has opened up possibilities for me to not just learn about hydrothermal alteration processes in the Rochechouart and Chicxulub Impact structures but also extend this understanding to Mars and Ceres as well,” Prakash said.

Congratulations to #UTIG graduate research assistant and @txgeosciences doctoral student Medha Prakash on receiving the UT Austin Graduate School Outstanding Graduate Research Award, which will fund Prakash’s fourth year of her doctoral program!

“I think eventually an international team will go there and put seismometers on the moon again. In this kind of thing, there is no boundary between countries,” said Nakamura. Read more about Nakamura and UTIG’s seismic lunar legacy: ig.utexas.edu/news/2019/apol…

UTIG researchers studied more seismic data as it become available on subsequent Apollo missions to learn about deep moonquakes, high frequency teleseismic events and much more.

As the world celebrates the return of #ArtemisII, we’re reminiscing on @NASA's last trip to the moon over 50 years ago. Did you know #UTIG scientists were part of the original Apollo missions?